Charting the High Frontier of Space | Ed Lu

Apart from a very limited amount of state sponsorship, it was usually the prospect of commercial gain or of new lands for settlement which funded exploration – a misleading term, which usually signified the ‘mapping’ of existing trade paths through local informants. But the propulsion of economic or demographic need was spasmodic at best.

for the current scientific narrative to guide us toward a planetary community, we must reframe its focus—not by portraying science as the triumph of human reason over the natural world, but as a narrative that situates humanity within the epic vastness of cosmic and evolutionary history.