Chapter Two - When Our Space-Ship Landed On Earth . . .

Jules Verne, the grandfather of all science-fiction novelists, has become an
accepted writer. His fantasies are no longer science-fiction and the astronauts

of our day travel round the world in 86 minutes, not 80 days. We are now going
to describe what might happen on an imaginary journey by space-ship, yet this
imaginary journey will become possible in fewer decades than the time it took to
contract Jules Verne’s crazy notion of a journey round the world in 80 days to a
lightning journey of 86 minutes. But let us not think in terms of such short
periods of time! Let us assume that our space-ship will leave the earth for an
unknown distant sun in 150 years’ time.

The space-ship would be as big as a present-day ocean liner and would therefore
have a launching weight of about 100,000 tons with a fuel load of 99,800 tons,
i.e. an effective pay load of less than 200 tons.

Impossible?

Already we could assemble a space-ship piece by piece while in orbit round a
planet. Yet even this assembly work will become unnecessary in less than two
decades, because it will be possible to prepare the giant space-ship for
launching on the moon. Besides, the basic research for the rocket propulsion of
tomorrow is in full swing. Future rocket motors will mainly be powered by
nuclear fusion and travel at nearly the speed of light. A bold new method, the
feasibility of which has already been shown by physical experiments on
individual elementary particles, will be the photon rocket. The fuel carried on
board the photon rocket enables the rocket ’ s velocity to approach so close to
the speed of light that the effects of relativity, especially the time dilation
between launching site and space-ship, can operate to the full. The fuel
supplies will be transformed into electro-magnetic radiation and ejected as a
clustered propulsive jet with the speed of light. Theoretically a spaceship
equipped with photon propulsion can reach 99 per cent of the speed of light. At
this speed the boundaries of our solar system would be blasted open!

An idea that really makes the mind reel. But we who are on the threshold of a
new age should remember that the giant strides in technology which our
grandfathers experienced were just as staggering in their day: the railways,
electricity, telegraphy, the first car, the first aeroplane. We ourselves heard
music in the air for the first time; we see colour TV; we saw the first
launching of space-ships and we get news and pictures from satellites that
revolve around the earth. Our children’s children will go on interstellar
journeys and carry out cosmic research at technical faculties in the
universities .

Let us follow the journey of our imaginary space-ship, whose goal is a distant
fixed star. It would certainly be amusing to try to imagine what the crew of the
space-ship did to kill time on their journey. Because however vast the distances
they covered and however slowly time might crawl along for those left behind on
earth, Einstein’s theory of relativity still holds good. It may sound
incredible, but time on board the space-ship travelling barely below the speed
of light actually passes more slowly than on the earth.

If the space-ship travels at 99 per cent of the speed of light, only 14-1 years
pass for our crew on their flight in the universe, whereas 100 years go by for
those who stay at home. The difference in time between the space travellers and
the people on earth can be calculated by the following formula, given by the
Lorentz transformations:

(t = space-travellers’ time, T=time on earth, v= speed of flight, c= speed of
light) .

The speed of the space-ship’s flight can be calculated by the bask rocket
equation worked out by Professor Ackeret :

(v — velocity, w = speed of jet, c = speed of light, t = fuel load at
launching) .

At the moment when our space-ship is approaching the star which is its target,
the crew will undoubtedly examine planets, fix their position, undertake
spectral analyses, measure forces of gravity and calculate orbits. Lastly they
will choose as landing-place the planet whose conditions come closest to those
of our earth. If our space-ship consists solely of its pay load after a journey
of shall we say eighty light years, because all the energy supplies have been
used up, the crew will have to replenish the tanks of their space-craft with
fissionable material at their goal.

Let us assume, then, that the planet chosen to land on is similar to the earth.
I have already said that this assumption is by no means impossible. Let us also
venture the supposition that the civilisation of the planet visited is in about
the same state of development as the earth was 8,000 years ago. Of course, this
would all have been confirmed by the instruments on board the space-ship long
before the landing.

Naturally our space travellers have also picked on a landing site that lies
close to a supply of fissionable matter. Their instruments show quickly and
reliably in which mountain ranges uranium can be found.

The landing is carried out according to plan.

Our space travellers see beings making stone tools; they see them hunting and
killing game with throwing spears; flocks of sheep and goats are grazing on the
steppe; primitive potters are making simple household utensils. A strange sight
to greet our astronauts!

But what do the primitive beings on this planet think about the monstrosity that
has just landed there and the figures that climbed out of it? Let us not forget
that we too were semi-savages 8,000 years ago. So it is not surprising when the
semi-savages who experience this event bury their faces in the ground and dare
not raise their eyes. Until this day they have worshipped the sun and the moon.
And now something earthshaking has happened: the gods have come down from
heaven !

From a safe hiding-place the inhabitants of the planet watch our space
travellers, who wear strange hats with rods on their heads (helmets with
antennae); they are amazed when the night is made bright as day (searchlights);
they are terrified when the strangers rise effortlessly into the air (rocket-
belts) ; they bury their heads in the ground again when weird unknown ‘animals’
soar in the air, droning, buzzing and snorting (helicopters, all-purpose
vehicles), and lastly they take flight to the safe refuge of their caves when a
frightening boom and rumble resounds from the mountains (a trial explosion) .

Undoubtedly our astronauts must seem like almighty gods to these primitive
people 1

Day by day the space travellers continue their laborious work and after some
time a delegation of priests or medicine men will probably approach the
astronaut whom their primitive instincts tell them is the chief in order to make
contact with the gods. They bring gifts to pay homage to their guests. It is
conceivable that our spacemen will rapidly learn the language of the inhabitants
with the help of a computer and can thank them for the courtesy shown. Yet
although they can explain to the savages in their own language that no gods have
landed, that no higher beings worthy of adoration have paid a visit, it has no
effect. Our primitive friends simply do not believe it. The space travellers
came from other stars, they obviously have tremendous power and the ability to
perform miracles. They must be gods! There is also no point in the spacemen
trying to explain any help they may offer. It is all far beyond the
comprehension of these people who have been so terrifyingly invaded.

Although it is impossible to imagine all the things that might take place from
the day of landing onwards, the following points might well figure on a
preconceived plan:

Part of the population would be won over and trained to help search a crater
formed by an explosion for fissionable matter needed for the return to earth.

The most intelligent of the inhabitants would be elected ‘king’. As a visible
sign of his power, he would be given a radio set through which he could contact
and address the ‘gods’ at any time.

Our astronauts would try to teach the natives the simplest forms of civilisation
and some moral concepts, in order to make the development of social order
possible. A few specially selected women would be fertilised by the astronauts.
Thus a new race would arise that skipped a stage in natural evolution.

We know from our own development how long it would take before this new race
became space experts. Consequently, before the astronauts began their return
flight to earth, they would leave behind clear and visible signs which only a
highly technical, mathematically based society would be able to understand much
much later.

An attempt to warn our proteges of dangers in store would have little chance of
success. Even if we showed them the most horrifying films of terrestrial wars
and atomic explosions, it would not prevent the beings living on this planet
from committing the same follies any more than it now stops (almost) the whole
of sentient humanity from constantly playing with the burning flame of war.

While our space-ship disappears again into the mists of the universe, our
friends will talk about the miracle— ‘the gods were here!’ They will translate it
into their simple language, turn it into a saga to be handed down to their sons
and daughters and they will turn the presents and implements, and everything
that the space travellers left behind into holy relics.

If our friends have mastered writing, they may make a record of what happened:
uncanny, weird, miraculous. Then their texts will relate— and drawings will show-
that gods in golden clothes were there in a flying boat that landed with a
tremendous din. They will write about chariots which the gods drove over land
and sea, and of terrifying weapons that were like lightning and they will
recount that the gods promised to return.

They will hammer and chisel in the rock pictures of what they had once seen:

Shapeless giants, with helmets and rods on their heads, carrying boxes in front
of their chests; balls on which indefinable beings sit and ride through the air;
staves from which rays are shot out as if from a sun; strange shapes, resembling
giant insects, which were vehicles of some sort.

There are no limits to the fantasy of the illustrations that result from the
visit of our space-ship. We shall sec later what traces the ‘gods’ who visited
the earth in our remote antiquity engraved on the tablets of the past.

It is quite easy to sketch the subsequent development of the planet that our
space-ship visited. The inhabitants have learnt a lot by watching the ‘gods’
surreptitiously; the place on which the space-ship stood will be declared holy
ground, a place of pilgrimage, where the heroic deeds of the gods will be
praised in song. Pyramids and temples will be built on it— in accordance with
astronomic laws, of course. The people grows, there are wars that devastate the
place of the gods, and then come generations who rediscover and excavate the
holy places and try to interpret the signs.

This is the stage we have reached. Now that we can land men on the moon we can

open our minds, to space travel. We know the effect the sudden arrival of a

large oceangoing sailing vessel had on primitive people in for example the South

Sea Islands. We know the devastating effect a man like Cortes, from another

civilisation, had on South America. So then we can appreciate, if only dimly,
the fantastic impact the arrival of space-craft would have made in prehistoric
times .

We must now take another look at the forest of question marks— the array of
unexplained mysteries. Do they make sense as the remains of prehistoric space
travellers? Do they lead us into our past and yet link up with our plans for the

future?