Image Credit - Nasa and the Apollo 8 crew.
For all of mankind's time on Earth, we have only seen a Moon-Rise, or even a sun-rise. But, to see an Earth-rise spoke a million words!
Image Credit - Nasa/Apollo 11 - Neil Armstrong
This is Buzz Aldrin picture taken by Neil Armstrong. The significance of the picture, I'd say, is that of a new step for life comparable to life going from the sea to the land; or, even, Dinosaurs learning to fly. And, the picture here is of a Human with a spacesuit to help it breath in an environment it's not originally suited for.
As Neil Armstrong said,
"One small step for Man one giant leap for Mankind"
- Connecting the Space frontier a little more with some of the themes in my blog here . . .
In my Nature and Origin of Mathematics, which is updated in the intro to my Gospel of Truth(of all places!), I point out idealization and damming up nature in some way - clearing of the fields in agriculture, or the discovery of the vacuum by Galileo. As Galileo showed, when any kind of friction is removed, you get a vacuum from which different masses fall at the same rate. This was highlighted in Apollo 15(i've actually posted this Apollo 15 before; but, because this is getting brought up again, I'm including this video of Apollo 15 in this post as well!)
If this youtube video gets taken down, what this was is Apollo 15 astronaut performing the Galileo experiment of dropping a heavier and lighter object in a vacuum, and seeing them drop at the same rate of speed! This was done in the vacuum of space on the Moon.
Going out to space is like finding that more general viewpoint from which to view nature and the universe. This is, also, of course, symbolized by all the astronomical telescopes that get put up in orbit. Out there, they can see more clearly in the vacuum, beyond the Earth's atmosphere which distorts and keeps certain electromagnetic wavelengths from coming down to the surface of the Earth.
As some space exploration/colonization enthusiasts like Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan, and Isaac Asimov would point out . . . going out to space would have a similar affect on mankind as the discovery of the Americas by 1500 Europeans. Or, at least, you'd hope so; when they discovered Native Americans, and that they didn't know about Christianity, they just converted them. For the most part, space exploration will lead to a more scientific existence.
Despite Religions trying to force people to their beliefs without facts/logic, they couldn't get rid of science. They used guns and maps for navigation. Science/Mathematics is like an invisible hand, like in economics - the supply and demand - that keeps prices in check.
Humans are defined/distinguished by the other life by it's dependence on science/technology for survival. The Religions just apologize, or change their beliefs to suit the advancement of science/mathematics. Back in the times of the discovery of the Americas, they changed their beliefs to "Deism." Even further back, the Church, reacting to the translations from Corboda Spain around 1100 A.D. said "O.k. there's two kinds of truth - humdrum everyday truth that you get from science and looking at nature, and spiritual truth."
When we colonize out in space, science/technology and mathematics will really take hold though.
Out in space, there's no nature to provide you with food. Everything has to be understood scientifically - the food, the water supply. You'd have to know your mathematics to do the celestial mechanics. You'd need astronomical telescopes to study the stars; no which ones at any time are due for a supernova eruption. You'd need gravitational wave detectors to find Black holes perhaps, or x-ray and gamma ray telescopes because the matter they are taking in will be accelerated to such velocities that x-ray and gamma rays will give off the locations of a given Black Hole. Out in space is a scientific future.
Out in space, you don't have to worry about nearly as much Nature as we've had to down here on Earth - Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes. With space colonies, you can really control the weather. There's other things to worry about; but, they can also be mitigated - things like meteorite/asteroid impacts(one should note here that with a smaller more manueverable space colony, one can control being struck by an asteroid a lot easier than down here on Earth; you wouldn't think of changing the orbit of the Earth; that would make the weather too hot/too cold), cosmic rays(can be kept down possibly to lower levels by layers of water, and magnetic fields generated by nuclear fusion powered superconducting coils. I would say a "forest fire" would be a bigger problem to worry about than just about anything else on a space colony. But, a space colony can be equipped with advanced fire fighting systems.
And so, out in space, there won't be time for Religion.
