A lecture on Space Renaissance Philosophy was given at International Space University

January 11 2022 i gave a lecture, as invited lecturer, at International Space University, in Strasbourg.

The theme was an introduction to Space Renaissance Philosophy.

Prof. Bernard Foing – SRI President and long time lecturer at ISU – introduced my lecture and helped me to go over the great emotion to be talking before about 40 students!

They followed my presentation with very much attention, taking notes, and making questions at the end. The teaching staff, and the ISU President too, expressed great appreciation for my lecture and for the chosen topics: the value of human patrimony, the very core concept of the space philosophy. And the very most relevant philosophical reason to expand civilization into outer space.

It was not easy to choose a few arguments, to fit my presentation into 50 minutes, the standard lecture time. I decided to choose the value of human patrimony: why growth (including numeric growth) is key for our civilization to keep on progressing in culture, wealth, economy, civil rights, freedom, democracy.An important concept, following from the above humanistic core rationale, is 100% inclusivity as a new criteria – added to Kardashev, Zubrin and Sagan criteria — to evaluate the maturity of a civilization. 100% inclusivity is not possible, and it will be ever less possible, remaining closed within the limits of our mother planet Earth. A society 100% inclusive will be possible only taking profit of the Solar System resources and the immense freedom of its space.

The seed of a new feasible, and non-classist, utopia was presented as well, following and integrating the work done by Steven Wolfe, Howard Gartner, Abraham Maslow.

My presentation also included references to some philosophers – from Plato, to Giordano Bruno, Kepler, Kant, Robert Pirsig, reaching to Krafft A. Ehricke, his “Extraterrestrial Imperative”, and his strong promotion of humanity expansion to the Moon and beyond, as a new step of life industrialization, in its millennial negentropic struggle for freedom.

Btw, I believe a good discussion on KAE’s concepts and clear indications – geo-lunar space industrialization, building Selenopolis, start living and working in space — is very much opportune and timely, since they are still quite actual, though they were written 50 years ago.

I recall hereafter the Three Fundamental Laws of Astronautics, as they were written by Krafft Ehricke, showing clearly that KAE was a strong space expansionist, very far from any pre-copernican ptolemaicist concepts (i.e. using space resources for Earth only):

First Law