SPACE AS AN OCEAN
LESSONS FROM THE AGE OF EUROPEAN MARINE EXPLORATION FOR THE SPACE AGE.
From the Book "PROTOCOLS" (c) 2012 by American Admiralty Books
CONCLUSION
We've now come to the end of the line of our excerpts from the book PROTOCOLS. This final excerpt which we present as a conclusion for the essays presented in this series is actually from the original book proposal and recounts what the entire series of essays is meant to convey.
There are important lessons to be learned from the age of sail exploration that will be beneficial in the age of space exploration and now is the time to examine these lessons.
Before the dawn of history mankind had migrated to the far corners of the earth , peopled all of the continents except Antarctica and peopled many of the oceanic islands. The migrations were the result of many individual and small group decisions and occurred over thousands of years. Tribes, nations, civilizations evolved in relative isolation separated by vast distances, especially vast oceans. By the time of the European Recognisance entire civilizations existed in relative to complete ignorance of each other. Then these civilizations collided when European explorers such as Columbus and Magellan appeared on scene. In about a century the world went from an age of tentative exploration to an age of colonial conquest and rule. During the age of exploration and the subsequent colonial conquest, entire civilizations, languages, religions, plant, and animal species were wiped out. Both conqueror and conquered became exposed to and died of previously unknown diseases.
Today we have pushed off into space. Space travel at present, is too complex and expensive to anticipate any migratory process. However now at the very beginning of what will probably prove to be a very long era of exploration we have already received some most important information from such efforts as the Hubble telescope. Plain and simply here is the that news. Other planets circle other stars, some of these planets have atmospheres, and water is more common in the universe than previously thought. The second news item is that the new theoretical physics informs us that light speed may not be the absolute speed limit in the universe and that faster than light travel actually may be possible. So we are faced with the reality that it is more probable than not that other inhabitable real estate exists in the universe and that we will probably eventually develop the means to find it. But what or who might we find there? Now is the time to think about the protocols of space exploration so that our first encounter with other life be it a microbe, a plant, or an intelligent, self aware being will not turn out like the last time , when worlds, long separated by a seemingly uncross-able ocean collided.
Today we have pushed off into space. Space travel at present, is too complex and expensive to anticipate any migratory process. However now at the very beginning of what will probably prove to be a very long era of exploration we have already received some most important information from such efforts as the Hubble telescope. Plain and simply here is the that news. Other planets circle other stars, some of these planets have atmospheres, and water is more common in the universe than previously thought. The second news item is that the new theoretical physics informs us that light speed may not be the absolute speed limit in the universe and that faster than light travel actually may be possible. So we are faced with the reality that it is more probable than not that other inhabitable real estate exists in the universe and that we will probably eventually develop the means to find it. But what or who might we find there? Now is the time to think about the protocols of space exploration so that our first encounter with other life be it a microbe, a plant, or an intelligent, self aware being will not turn out like the last time , when worlds, long separated by a seemingly uncross-able ocean collided.
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