The dream of spaceflight

"The Dream of Spaceflight is a meditation on the meaning of space exploration. The five chapters present a montage of images and reflections on the dream of spaceflight and its historical meaning. The first essay, a survey of major figures from Johannes Kepler to Wernher von Braun, sees in the rise of spaceflight a metaphor of modern history as a recurrent story of transformation and rebirth. The second essay recalls the romantic vision of the decades before Sputnik, when a balance of fantasy and reality generated new artistic forms that transformed the dream of spaceflight. The third essay looks at the moon landing as the signature event of our century - the one that our descendants, a thousand years from now, will see as our greatest achievement - and the fourth offers new perspectives on the nature of wonder, suggesting that evolution and exploration and inseparable. A final essay returns to the themes of transformation and rebirth, seeing spaceflight as a cure for the withered capacity for wonder that afflicts the postmodern mind."--BOOK JACKET.