Ad astra! To the stars! One day, perhaps sooner than we think, man will escape Earth and colonize the inner planets, and after that we shall explore what is beyond the stars. When our ancestors looked at the night sky they saw gods. When Cortez stood upon that peak in Darien and looked at the stars he saw the unreachable. Today, we look upon the darkness of the deep night sky and see beyond the spheres, to the farthest edges of the farthest beyond.

Within the spheres the glowing stars
Sang sweetly in the mind
Of Earth-bound man and showed the way
To shed the chains that bind
Him to the tiny blue-green Earth
That danced around the sun
As bound as he to stay the course
Until all time is done
Then came the science of the West
The moon was conquered first
And then the inner planets fell
To sudden fevered burst
We gathered then to catch our breath
Ad astra! was the cry
And silver ships and iron-hard men
Now pierce the star-filled sky