My talk on "Space expansion: cultural considerations, long term perspectives, and spiritual implications" organized by Space Renaissance, February 19, 2024.

1. Space expansion: cultural considerations, long term
perspectives, and spiritual implications
I’ll elaborate on the cultural issues discussed in my book “Futurist spaceflight meditations” (2021). Then I’ll
discuss the long term future of space expansion and elaborate on its spiritual implications.

5. Government or private sector?
NASA or SpaceX?
Military or civilian?
U.S. or China?
Red of Blue?
Right stuff or left stuff?
…?

6. Government or private sector?
NASA or SpaceX?
Military or civilian?
U.S. or China?
Red of Blue?
Right stuff or left stuff?
…?
I don’t give a FUDAMN!
Let’s just GO !!! 🚀🚀🚀

7. Beginning to expand into space is the most important task of
humanity at this moment in history.
So let’s GO !!! 🚀🚀🚀
Our duty to God, or to God by any other name, or to the cosmos, or to
some cosmic principle that favors life, or to life itself, is to expand
beyond the Earth into the black sky.

8. Best literary pictures of the Apollo
adventure of the 1960s

9. I think we’re going to the Moon
because it’s in the nature of the human
being, said Neil Armstrong, the first
man to walk on the Moon, as reported
by Norman Mailer. It’s by the nature of
his deep inner soul.
Yes, we’re required
to do these things
just as salmon swim
upstream.

10. Going to the Moon and to the planets,
said John Glenn, the first American
astronaut to orbit the Earth, as reported
by Oriana Fallaci, isn’t a question of
right:
it’s a duty.

11. The destiny of Earthseed
is to take root among the
stars.
- Octavia Butler
Earthseed is the fictional philosophical
and religious movement described by
science fiction master Octavia Butler in
her novels “Parable of the Sower” and
“Parable of the Talents” (1993, 1998).

12. Fashionable, politically correct
bullnonsense (don’t read)

13. Rats locked in a cage kill each other
Random violence, toxic politics, racism, cancel culture
NO to planetary lockdown
We MUST expand into space

14. We are GOING!

15. Intuitive Machines’ IM-1: history in the making!

16. ILO-X: small prototype of future large scale lunar
astronomical observatories and research facilities

17. And of course...

18. WE ARE GOING to the Moon, to Mars, and then
onward to the planets and the stars!

20. But what if we are forced to wait?
the instruments of a lean but hopeful
civilization were refashioned. This was a
temporary civilization… but one which
promised itself great adventures in the “upper
world…”
– Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker

21. We must promise ourselves great adventures in space

22. The paramount importance of good science fiction

23. Where is the new great space epic?

24. Chinese science fiction

25. Radical techno-optimism
Old and new futurisms:
Italian futurism, Russian cosmism, extropy, e/acc

26. Optimistic
spaceflight culture
Energizing visions of
interplanetary,
interstellar, and
cosmic futures
Futurist space
philosophy
Optimism is not
uncool;
it is rebellious and
daring and vital.
- Guillermo Del Toro
Group-transcending
values
like spaceflight
The West needs:

27. Or else...

28. GREAT ADVENTURES
for (far) future generations among the stars.
YES WE CAN!
They say we can’t go to the stars.
I say bullnonsense!

29. Yours truly,
“attending Mass”
and thinking
about the
religious
implications of
space expansion

30. “there is a certain element of the
lumpen literati that is so dogmatically
atheist and materialist and earth-bound
that it finds the grandeur of space and
the myriad mysteries of cosmic
intelligence anathema.”
- Stanley Kubrick
Kubrick elaborates on his conviction
“that one can construct an intriguing
scientific definition of God.”
Kubrick evokes God-like beings that
emerge from matter “transformed into
beings of pure energy and spirit.”

31. “These entities might be in telepathic
communication throughout the cosmos and
thus be aware of everything that occurs,
tapping every intelligent mind as effortlessly as
we switch on the radio; they might not be
limited by the speed of light and their presence
could penetrate to the farthest corners of the
universe; they might possess complete mastery
over matter and energy; and in their final
evolutionary stage, they might develop into an
integrated collective immortal consciousness.
They would be incomprehensible to us except
as gods; and if the tendrils of their
consciousness ever brushed men’s minds, it is
only the hand of God we could grasp as an
explanation.”
THIS is what WE will become!

32. We will become God-like
cosmic engineers among the stars

33. “In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the
structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of
light…”
- Arthur Clarke
Clarke compares them with “something which, long ago, men had called spirit.”
“And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only
be God.”

34. Frank White extends James
Lovelock’s concept of Gaia,
the living Earth, to the whole
universe.
The universe itself will
become a living whole and we
are “actively encouraged by
larger forces” to expand
beyond the Earth and “help
the universe become
increasingly self-aware.”
What do we call a self-aware
universe?

35. ”It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God,
but to create him.” – Arthur Clarke
“The end point of engineering knowledge may be divine
knowledge.”- Richard Bushman

36. Omega
Alpha = Omega
Alpha

37. Alpha = Omega
“Perhaps the ultimate flower is also the primal seed from
which all sprang. Perhaps the final result of the cosmical
process is the attainment of full cosmical consciousness, and
yet (in some very queer way) what is attained in the end is
also, from another point of view, the origin of all things. So to
speak, God, who created all things in the beginning, is himself
created by all things in the end.”
- Olaf Stapledon

38. The 'Space Window' in the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. A
seven-gram lunar fragment, collected during the Apollo 11 mission, is
embedded in the center of the window.
It was presented to the Cathedral by Apollo 11 astronauts.