497 years ago, on September 20, 1519, Ferdinand Magellan and his small fleet of five ships set out from the coast of Spain with the mission of circumnavigating the globe.
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3 years later, on September 8th, a single ship with a depleted crew of 18 Europeans and 3 Indonesians anchored off Seville, Spain.
A record of the voyage had been maintained by an Italian adventurer named Antonio Pigafetta, who had joined the expedition while it was being assembled in Seville.
The expedition set out from Seville on August 10, 1519, and made its way to the coast.
The Magellan expedition is a framework upon which I hope to build a vision of a future that might unfold in coming centuries.
Themes to be explored include what a space habitat moving away from Earth might look like. Kim Stanley Robinson's "Aurora" is an example of a vision of such an expedition.
To follow up on an earlier post in this Category in The Knowledge Forum, I hope to develop the concept of a planet constructed from available materials at a destination solar system, to provide an optimum environment for Earth life as we know it. The fact that life is evolving today and will continue to evolve in the centuries ahead is interesting but not useful for planning.
Finally, this series of posts is intended to explore how communities might be assembled on Earth today, to demonstrate both the technology and the psychology for a community of 10,000 persons which might have the stamina to persist and to thrive for 1000 years in a space habitat.
(th) 2016/09/11