An Allegory About Mankind’s Transformative Adventure: Leaving Earth to Become Settlers of New Worlds in the Firmament.
An allegorical conversation between Prometheus, the Titan who defied Zeus and gave humans the gift of fire, and the human spirit, represented by Galileo Galilei, whose 15th century exploration of celestial bodies was the initial step in our achievement of another transformative triumph of mankind: our ability to leave the earth and travel to -and establish human settlements on -other celestial bodies. Galileo begs for Prometheus’ sponsorship in perfecting space voyaging, explaining that our aspiration to populate other worlds beyond our own will constitute no less than a second Renaissance for the human population. Galileo agrees with Prometheus’ warning that we face some of the most complex and completely unique challenges we have ever confronted in the course of our long history. But the rewards are potentially spectacular: space and its population of other worlds than our own hold out the promise of exponential advances in our power to live safer, longer lives and to escape some of the potentially cataclysmic dangers we face in this century: devastating climate change, pestilence, crippling famine and nuclear destruction—the Four Horsemen of our own Apocalypse. The challenge of conquering the obstacles to creating new worlds in which humans can survive is daunting, but one we are meeting with increasing success. And as we used Prometheus’ gift of fire to propel humans to new heights of achievement, we are grateful for his support of this new adventure: survival in worlds beyond our own in which we can flourish and realize the enormous new benefits those worlds will offer.