Copernicus

During the middle ages, the Christian church combined an ideologically convenient ptolemaic
Earth-centered system, with the naive picture of creation found in the Bible. For hundreds of
years, those who challenged this grotesque world view risked torture and death at the hands
of the Inquisition. As a silver lining, Christian theologians relayed to future generations a
number of otherwise lost Greek notions about the Universe... in the process of refuting them
as "heresies."

Only in 1543, or almost 18 centuries after the Greeks first hypothesized a heliocentric
universe, a true renaissance man and amateur astronomer, Mikolaj Kopernik (known in Latin
as Nicolas Copernicus) finally dealt a mortal blow to Ptolemy's concept of the world with a
scientifically solid proof of a Sun-centered solar system. Copernicus postponed the publication
of his revolutionary work until the end of his life, possibly in fear of religious persecution.
Initial condemnation of Copernicus' work by the church was somewhat muted and
inconsistent, however as the heliocentric system's popularity grew, especially through the
efforts of Galileo Galilei, reaction followed. In 1616, the church banned the original version of
the Copernicus' book along with any writing which dared to defend the heliocentric system.
The church would not relent on its official ban of the book until 1835. The chilling effect of the
Inquisition essentially pushed further advances in astronomy to the Protestant world. (213)

Kepler

With Copernicus' monumental discoveries, his misconceptions about planets rotating in small
circles, while simultaneously moving about the sun looked really minor in retrospect. He also
mistakenly placed the Sun away from the center of the circle about which planets were
moving, in an effort to explain deviations in observational data. Yet, the true picture of the
Solar System still had to be refined. Johannes Kepler achieved just that at the beginning of the
17th century. Ironically, despite his adherence to ideal shapes of the Universe, Kepler was the
one who finally established that planets move around the Sun, not in perfect circles but on
ellipses, with the Sun sitting asymmetrically at one of two "focuses" of the ellipse.

Kepler also proved, with Mars as the example, that planets accelerate as they approach the
Sun and then slow down as they move toward the point of the ellipse farthest from the Sun.
He also correctly assumed that the life-supporting atmosphere forms only a thin mantle
around the Earth and beyond it extends a deadly abyss of vacuum.

Ironically, while these remarkable foresights greatly advanced human understanding of the
world, they also erected seemingly unchallengeable barriers on the way of those who tried to
dream of realistic ways for space travel.

Galilei

The invention of a practical telescope in Holland in 1608 forever revolutionized astronomy and
gave the ancient science its most powerful tool. On July 26, 1609, at 9 p.m., Thomas Harriot
apparently made very first astronomical observations with a telescope pointing his new "Dutch
trunke" to the Moon. Harriot's drawings of the five-day old Moon showed the terminator (day
and night) line. The observations had never been published. Shortly thereafter, Galileo Galilei
used his own version of the device to finally prove that planets are globular worlds of various
sizes, like the Earth and the Moon. In 1610, Jupiter revealed the first four of its moons to the
peering power of Galilei's telescope, further expanding a list of destinations in the Solar
System.

Within four decades, Johannes Hevelius published a detailed topographical study of the Moon
based on telescope observations, dethroning it as the sister of the Earth. Instead Hevelius
presented an essentially modern image of the Moon as a lifeless, waterless body with strange
ring-shaped mountain ranges.

During the same century, calculations by Giovanni Cassini and other astronomers "expanded"
the solar system to an astounding 80 million miles across (against an actual 93 million miles),
essentially doubling the stage for potential exploration in comparison to previous estimates.

Despite the Moon lost appeal as an inhabitable world, Mars and Venus were proven to have
atmospheres and thus presented intriguing mysteries. At the same time, a new understanding
of distances devoid of air between those worlds, solidly relegated the idea of space travel to
the realm of fiction.