Have you seen Jeff Bezos and three passengers return to Earth after the historic #BlueOrigin flight to edge of space!? We’re celebrating this brilliant achievement with Look Up by Sarah Cruddas! Grab a cold beverage and escape to the stars.
We are born explorers.
Human beings have always been driven by a desire to know what is over the next hill, on the other side of the river, or across the ocean. In the course of our history, our journeys of discovery may have been motivated by a desire to get rich, to expand our country’s territory or to escape from something at home. But it’s our innate curiosity and our ability to wonder what else is out there that prompted us to make the first steps into the jungle or cast off from the quayside.
Of course, our human curiosity has turned out very badly for some individuals, who took huge risks and paid the ultimate price. But it is this fundamental curiosity that has driven us forward as a species. We love to learn, we yearn to understand what is out there, and leaving the beaten track has taught us a lot of valuable lessons. Our world of today is owed to those who pushed the limits of what is possible; who had a restless urge to know what was over that next hill. Each generation has built on the knowledge gained as a result of the extraordinary risks taken by those who came before them – be that exploring the land around us, sailing the great oceans or taming the skies.
Our quest to discover Earth has gone hand in hand with our fascination with the stars and the universe above us. For nearly as long as there have been people, we have been captivated by space. Cave paintings found at various sites in Europe – some possibly dating back as far as 40,000 years – not only depict hunting scenes and people, but also patterns of the stars in the sky. These primitive star charts were most likely used as a form of time-keeping and demonstrate that our prehistoric ancestors were – like us – looking up.
Look Up is out now in hardback. You can buy it from your local bookshop, bookshop.org, Hive, Waterstones and Amazon.
