23 May 2026. Stories about trips to the Moon and to the stars have been told from the very beginnings of cultural evolution — and presently humankind is (back on track) on its way to the stars. On occasion of the SteamPunk festival in Leipzig we explored how art, literature, industrial revolution, and scientific discoveries paved the road in this endeavor — and we contemplated what might come up to us. To finish off, we joined the SteamPunk picnic in the Clara Zetkin Park.

On the 23rd of May 2026 we took a look into humankind’s long way to the Moon. In a special exhibition on the top floor @Grassi sky of the Grassi museum we started the tour with a reminder about the use of stars in navigation and their hampered visibility due to pollution in modern times. The relevance of oral traditions and sagas for knowledge sharing in pre-modern societies was further elaborated by reading and discussing the Peter Gynt saga in the garden of the Grieg museum. In the Kanonenteichanlage we wondered to which extend the striving for human perfection — as expressed in Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch and many Tech Billionaire’s fascination for Transhumanism — is driving the present renaissance of space travel. The imagination and implementation of trips to the Moon was addressed in front of the facsimile of Kepler’s copy of Copernikus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. For quite some time we continued our discussions during our picnic with the SteamPunks in the Clara Zetkin Park.

Star gazing in the Grassi museum

More than 60 millennia ago the first humans arrived on the islands of Oceania, and in Indonesian caves archaeologists have recently found paintings that date back for more than 45,000 years. For thousands of years the people in Eastern Asia have traveled the oceans, and they must have had profound knowledge of the star constellations to facilitate navigation on the wide oceans. In oral traditions this knowledge is passed on in the form of sagas of heroes that have given their names to the constellations. Later on, the zodiac signs helped humankind to keep track of the seasons. In the very old times to synchronize their travels with those of their prey animals, and later to determine the proper time for plowing and sowing and harvesting.

After this introduction we climbed the stair sculpture “Open City” on the top floor of the Grassi Museum. Its inscription “Can you see the stars” reminded us about what we modern humans have lost due to the hampered star visibility as a result of air and light pollution, and by relying on watches and GPS signals.

Oral traditions, Peter Gynt, and Grieg

We proceeded to the Johannes graveyard where we had a brief stop to acknowledge the spiritual quest of humans for progressive sanctification — or rather self-optimization in modern times. In Eastern religions traditions the enlightened are freed from the perpetual sufferings of the world. In the Ancient sagas the heroes find grace from the gods and are are raised to the stars. From 1865 till 1869, while he was a student in Leipzig, Friedrich Nietzsche lived across the street. Here, he started to build his philosophical ideas. Twenty years later, in his “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”), he formulated them as an incentive for humans to strive for education and refinement of the soul, to strive to become a superior human, an Übermensch. In 1902 Bernard Shaw picked up the concept in his screen play “Man and Superman”. There is an open debate which aspects of Nietzsches Übermensch-repercussions were known to the authors of the comics superhero.

Rather than entering this debate we proceeded to the Grieg Begegnungsstätte. In the tea pavilion in its garden we had a reading of the Norwegian folktale Round the Yule Log/Peter Gynt. Per Gynt goes out to help his fellow humans by driving away monster trolls. The story has mysterious rhymes that do not match up for me. The tale feels much more archaic than those of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, or the literary fairy tales of Anderson and Hauff. It features a hero of remarkable bravery that reminds me more of a hero of ancient sagas than of fairy tale characters. However, in his stage play Henrik Ibsen transforms the saga of a super-hero protecting his neighbors into a fairy tale with a classical love story. Ibsen’s Peer Gynt is a lost son who takes a long trip to eventually return to his true love. Some of the most popular pieces of classical music have been composed by Edvard Grieg as stage music for the play.

From Nietzsche to Transhumanism

In the Kanonenteichanlage at the venue right in the middle between the historic Science Campus in the Talstraße and the medical research facilities of the university we added a modern aspect to the enterprise of support and optimization: Support for the hearing impaired was pioneered right at this location in the previous building of the Samuel Heinicke School. Presently, this support is revolutionized by Cochlear Implants. They comprise sensitive microphones and a neuro-link that feeds an audio-signal directly into the relevant nerve cells. Thus, even some deaf persons gain the facility of hearing by these high-tech implants. Similarly, neuro-links provide opportunities to implement the steering of prosthesis by neuro-links between neurons and the microprocessor controlling its motion. Where will this stop? Scientists are on the way to build cyborg insects for applications such as urban search and rescue. It is acceptable to provide implants to equip humans with special skills?
Arguably, this is in line with Nietzsches idea of human improvement towards the Übermensch.
The idea to enthusiastically embrace the new opportunities has fiercely been embraced by the eminent biologist J. B. S. Haldane:

The chemical or physical inventor is always a Prometheus. There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god. But if every physical and chemical invention is a blasphemy, every biological invention is a perversion. There is hardly one which, on first being brought to the notice of an observer from any nation which had not previously heard of their existence, would not appear to him as indecent and unnatural.
— John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, in Daedalus: or, Science and the Future (4 Feb 1923)

In the second half of the 20th century the idea was further supported by Julian Huxley, the 1st Director-General of the UNESCO,

Up till now human life has generally been, as Hobbes described it, “nasty, brutish and short”; the great majority of human beings (if they have not already died young) have been afflicted with misery… we can justifiably hold the belief that these lands of possibility exist, and that the present limitations and miserable frustrations of our existence could be in large measure surmounted… The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself—not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity.
— Julian Sorell Huxley: “Transhumanism”. in New Bottles for New Wine. London: Chatto & Windus. (1957) pp. 13–17.

Presently, the promises of Transhumanism are enticing inspirations for Tech Billionaires. They smell business opportunities, and they indulge in dreams of greater efficiency, and a longer and healthier life based on AI and bio-technological human enhancements.

Trips to the Moon: From imagination to implementation

The very same billionaires also push the race to the space. October 30, 2000, was the last time no one was up in space. Since 25 years we have space tourism. On April 1, 2026, astronauts orbited the Moon once again. A manned Moon landing is planned for two years from now. The billionaires hold that it was a big mistake to stop manned space missions in the 1980s. They are ready to head for Mars and beyond.

Johannes Kepler aimed to popularize his insights about the motion of planets in our solar system by writing a popular science novel, Somnium, seu opus posthumum De astronomia lunari, that was translated to vernacular languages in the late 19. century. Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov referred to it as one of the roots of Science Fiction. In parallel to this translation Jules Verne developed the vision to develop technologies for space travel, and promoted it in his novel From the Earth to the Moon. Throughout the Western World these novels inspired young people to plan careers as inventors, entrepreneurs, scientists, and engineers with the aim to make a dream come true. Their efforts were flanked by filmmakers and writers. Fritz Lang provided money for the German missile program from funds raised for his movie Frau im Mond (1929). The Little Prince came to us from Asteroid B 612. Superman from the (fictional) planet Krypton, and he is living in the city of Metropolis that is inspired by another Fritz Lang movie. Publications for the general audience, and many highly visible artistic projects were the beacons that inspired many a man to strive for a career in spaceship design or as an astronaut. In the 1960s the West German TV science fiction series „Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion“ cleared the streets of West Germany with viewership ratings of well over 50%.
I am fascinated that the spaceship for the upcoming trip to the Moon has also been named Orion.

In our final we addressed future perspectives:
What do AI and Transhumanism promise for our future?
Will new space missions revive a wide-spread fascination for adventures in space research and space travel?
Will Germany keep its position as a nation performing bleeding edge space science, or will this field of research and technology be swarted by skeptics?

We would like to express our sincere thanks to all participants for their lively interest, the intensive exchange, and for staying so long for a splendid picnic.