To The Stars!
Imagination is the mother of invention, and no more so than with Man’s fascination with the stars. In 49AD, the philosopher Seneca wrote “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars”, and it has taken our species almost another two millennia to begin to understand the workings of the universe, and to figure out how to get out there.
The last century has made reality of many of the stories we have imagined about travelling to the Moon, to Mars and into the wider universe. Today we are on the cusp of the next big leap away from the Earth; to living in space, to colonising new planets and to finding ways to travel beyond our Solar System.
TO THE STARS! is a visual journey which combines documentary footage and imaginative science-fiction to chart how Man’s imagination has driven us to make our dreams of reaching the stars a reality. DJs Tom Brown and Sassan Darvish enhanced the trip with a live performance of deep, driving techno beats and electronic sounds, interspersed with original audio footage, that carried us from Earth into space, and from there to Mars and beyond.
TO THE STARS! was performed on Saturday 24th November 2018, for one night only, at Whirled Cinema, Loughborough Junction, London, to a sold-out audience.
Fiction that inspired early pioneers in aeronautics and space flight:
De la Terre à la Lune (1865) and Autour de la Lune / Jules Verne (1870) - inspiration for both Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Hermann Oberth, two of the founding fathers of aeronautics.
War of the Worlds / H.G. Wells (1898) – inspiration for Robert H. Goddard, inventor of the first liquid-fuelled rocket.
Frau im Mond / Fritz Lang (1929) – inspiration to Wernher von Braun, who helped design the Nazi V2 rocket and was later director of the USA’s post-war Space programme and NASA.
Stories that merge fiction with the latest science of the time:
Frau im Mond / Fritz Lang (1929) – used Hermann Oberth as a technical adviser. This film also invented the idea of counting down to launch (it was more dramatic!).
Explorers on the Moon / Hergé (1954) – the only unrealistic detail was Tintin’s helmet.
Man in Space, Man and the Moon and Mars and Beyond / Walt Disney (1955-7) – narrated by Wernher von Braun.
Apollo at Go / Sutton (1963) – fictional portrayal of the Apollo Moon landing
A Fall of Moondust / Arthur C. Clarke (1961) – the dangers of living in space through a scientific lens.
Star Trek / Roddenberry (1966 – 2018) – predicted numerous technological advances, including the mobile phone, Bluetooth, flat screen TVs, tablets, Google glass, hyposprays and tricorders.
Revelation Space / Alastair Reynolds (2000) – the author has a PhD in astronomy.
Interstellar / Nolan (2014) – collaborated with physicist Kip Thorne to create visual representations of gravitational equations of a black hole, leading to new scientific papers on gravitics and black holes (and a book explaining it all).