The Space Fleet

Space Fleet

The ancient Mediterranean world was famous for searfaring. Alexandria was the greatest seaport on the planet. Once you knew the Earth to be a sphere of modest diameter, would you not be tempted to make voyages of exploration, to seek out undiscovered lands, perhaps even to attempt to sail around the planet?

In fact, four hundred years before Eratosthenes, Africa had been circumnavigated by a Phoenician fleet in the employ of the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho. They set sail, probably in frail open boats, from the Red Sea, turned down the east coast of Africa up into the Atlantic, returning through the Mediterranean. This epic journey took three years, about as long as a modern Voyager spacecraft takes to fly from Earth to Saturn.

Today, a reasonable, even an ambitious of unmanned exploration of the planets is inexpensive. The cost of major ventures into Space – permanent bases on the Moon or human exploration of Mars, say – is so large, that they will not be mustered, I think in the very near future unless we make dramatic progress…

A blue spaceship. The stars are the friends of explorers, then with seagoing ships on Earth and now with spacefaring ships in the sky. Image: © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)