I want to tell you a story about stories. And I want to tell you this story because I think we need to remember that sometimes the stories we tell each other are more than just tales or entertainment or narratives. They're also vehicles for sowing inspiration and ideas across our societies and across time. The story I'm about to tell you is about how one of the most advanced technological achievements of the modern era has its roots in stories, and how some of the most important transformations yet to come might also.
我想要跟各位說 一個關於故事的故事。 我之所以想要說這個故事, 是因為我認為我們得要記住, 我們告訴彼此的故事 有時候不只是傳說、娛樂, 或闡述某事而已。 它們也是媒介, 此媒介將靈感及構想的種子 散播到社會各處, 到各個時代。 我要跟各位說的故事 是關於一項現代最先進的科技成就 是如何根據故事創造出來, 以及未來的重要科技轉型, 也可能會根據故事創造出來。
The story begins over 300 years ago, when Galileo Galilei first learned of the recent Dutch invention that took two pieces of shaped glass and put them in a long tube and thereby extended human sight farther than ever before. When Galileo turned his new telescope to the heavens and to the Moon in particular, he discovered something incredible. These are pages from Galileo's book "Sidereus Nuncius," published in 1610. And in them, he revealed to the world what he had discovered. And what he discovered was that the Moon was not just a celestial object wandering across the night sky, but rather, it was a world, a world with high, sunlit mountains and dark "mare," the Latin word for seas. And once this new world and the Moon had been discovered, people immediately began to think about how to travel there. And just as importantly, they began to write stories about how that might happen and what those voyages might be like.
這個故事始於三百年前, 當時伽利略•伽利萊初次 接觸到一項荷蘭的新發明, 這項發明是將兩片特定形狀的玻璃 放在一根長管子內, 人類視線能夠透過它 延伸到前所未見的距離。 當伽利略把他的新望遠鏡轉向天空, 特別是對準了月球時, 他發現了不可思議的事。 這些頁面出自伽利略 1610 年 出版的《星際信使》一書, 他藉此向全世界揭示他的發現。 他發現月球不僅僅是 在夜空中游移的天體, 而是一個世界, 這個世界裡有陽光普照的高山, 以及黑暗的「mare」, 這個字是拉丁文的「海」。 在這個新世界和月球被發現之後, 大家立即開始思考 要如何前往那裡。 同樣重要的, 他們開始寫故事, 幻想要如何前往月球, 及旅途可能會是什麼樣子。
One of the first people to do so was actually the Bishop of Hereford, a man named Francis Godwin. Godwin wrote a story about a Spanish explorer, Domingo Gonsales, who ended up marooned on the island of St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic, and there, in an effort to get home, developed a machine, an invention, to harness the power of the local wild geese to allow him to fly -- and eventually to embark on a voyage to the Moon. Godwin's book, "The Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither," was only published posthumously and anonymously in 1638, likely on account of the number of controversial ideas that it contained, including an endorsement of the Copernican view of the universe that put the Sun at the center of the Solar System, as well as a pre-Newtonian concept of gravity that had the idea that the weight of an object would decrease with increasing distance from Earth. And that's to say nothing of his idea of a goose machine that could go to the Moon.
最早這麼做的其中一人, 是赫里福德的主教, 他名叫法蘭西斯•戈德溫。 戈德溫寫了一個關於西班牙探險家 多明哥•岡薩雷斯的故事, 他被困在大西洋中的聖赫倫那島上, 為了要回家, 他發明了一台機器, 利用當地野鵝的力量載他飛翔, 最終還讓他進行一趟 飛往月球的旅程。 戈德溫的書 《月中人或論月球之旅》 在他死後才於 1638 年匿名出版。 出版的波折可能是因為 書中出現好幾個爭議性的觀點, 像是為哥白尼的宇宙觀背書。 哥白尼認為太陽是太陽系的中心, 並在牛頓之前就提出 地心引力的概念: 物體的重量會在離地球越遠時越輕。 更不用說他用野鵝機器 登上月球的點子了。 (笑聲)
(Laughter)
And while this idea of a voyage to the Moon by goose machine might not seem particularly insightful or technically creative to us today, what's important is that Godwin described getting to the Moon not by a dream or by magic, as Johannes Kepler had written about, but rather, through human invention. And it was this idea that we could build machines that could travel into the heavens, that would plant its seed in minds across the generations.
雖然用野鵝機器 進行登月之旅的想法 在今天看來不是甚麼洞見 或技術的創意, 重點是,戈德溫描述的登月之旅, 不是約翰尼斯•克卜勒所寫的, 要透過作夢或魔法來完成, 而是用人類的發明來實現。 就是這種建造機器的想法, 讓我們能航向天空, 而這個想法在往後 世世代代的人心中播下種子。
The idea was next taken up by his contemporary, John Wilkins, then just a young student at Oxford, but later, one of the founders of the Royal Society. John Wilkins took the idea of space travel in Godwin's text seriously and wrote not just another story but a nonfiction philosophical treatise, entitled, "Discovery of the New World in the Moon, or, a Discourse Tending to Prove that 'tis Probable There May Be Another Habitable World in that Planet." And note, by the way, that word "habitable." That idea in itself would have been a powerful incentive for people thinking about how to build machines that could go there. In his books, Wilkins seriously considered a number of technical methods for spaceflight, and it remains to this day the earliest known nonfiction account of how we might travel to the Moon.
下一個延續這個想法的 是同時期的約翰•威爾金斯, 那時他只是個牛津的年輕學生, 後來他成為皇家學會的創辦人之一。 約翰•威爾金斯很認真看待 戈德溫文中關於太空旅行的想法, 他寫的不僅是故事, 還是一部非虛構的哲學論文, 名為《發現月球新世界, 或,可能證明在該星球上 還有另一個適居世界的論述》。 請注意,他用了「適居」這個詞。 這個想法本身就是個強大的誘因, 讓人們思考如何建造出 登上月球的機器。 威爾金斯在他的書中認真考慮了 幾種太空飛行的方法。 這本書至今仍是我們所知 最早用非虛構的文字 來描述登月的可能方法。
Other stories would soon follow, most notably by Cyrano de Bergerac, with his "Lunar Tales." By the mid-17th century, the idea of people building machines that could travel to the heavens was growing in complexity and technical nuance. And yet, in the late 17th century, this intellectual progress effectively ceased. People still told stories about getting to the Moon, but they relied on the old ideas or, once again, on dreams or on magic. Why? Well, because the discovery of the laws of gravity by Newton and the invention of the vacuum pump by Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle meant that people now understood that a condition of vacuum existed between the planets, and consequentially between the Earth and the Moon. And they had no way of overcoming this, no way of thinking about overcoming this. And so, for well over a century, the idea of a voyage to the Moon made very little intellectual progress until the rise of the Industrial Revolution and the development of steam engines and boilers and most importantly, pressure vessels. And these gave people the tools to think about how they could build a capsule that could resist the vacuum of space.
許多故事很快地相繼出現, 以西哈諾•德貝熱拉克的 《月亮的故事》最為知名。 到了十七世紀中, 人類建造機器飛往天空的想法 變得更複雜,也有更多技術細節。 但,在十七世紀末, 這方面的發展卻停止了。 大家仍然會說登月的故事, 但故事都建立在舊想法上, 或者,又回頭去談作夢或魔法。 為什麼? 因為牛頓發現了地心引力的定律, 還有羅伯特•虎克和勞勃•波以耳 發明了真空幫浦, 這表示,大家現在知道 各行星之間的空間是真空的, 而地球和月球之間也是真空。 他們無法克服這一點, 無法想像要如何克服這一點。 所以,有足足一個世紀多, 登月之旅的構想沒有甚麼進展。 一直到工業革命興起, 發明了蒸汽引擎和鍋爐, 最重要的是,高壓容器出現了。 有了這些工具,大家就 可以去思考如何建造出 能抗拒真空狀態的太空艙。
So it was in this context, in 1835, that the next great story of spaceflight was written, by Edgar Allan Poe. Now, today we think of Poe in terms of gothic poems and telltale hearts and ravens. But he considered himself a technical thinker. He grew up in Baltimore, the first American city with gas street lighting, and he was fascinated by the technological revolution that he saw going on all around him. He considered his own greatest work not to be one of his gothic tales but rather his epic prose poem "Eureka," in which he expounded his own personal view of the cosmographical nature of the universe. In his stories, he would describe in fantastical technical detail machines and contraptions, and nowhere was he more influential in this than in his short story, "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall."
1835 年,在這樣的情境下, 出現了下一個 偉大的太空飛行故事, 作者是愛倫坡。 現在提到愛倫坡, 我們想到的是哥德體詩作, 以及《告密的心》、《烏鴉》等著作。 但他自認是個技術思想家。 他在巴爾的摩長大, 那是美國第一個 採用煤氣街燈的城市, 他周遭隨處可見的 這項技術革命讓他很著迷。 他認為他最偉大的作品 並不是他的哥德體故事, 而是他的長篇散文詩《我發現了》, 這部作品詳細說明了 他的個人觀點, 闡釋他如何看待 天地萬物的宇宙學本質。 他在故事中用充滿想像力的細節 來描述機器和新發明。 最有影響力的當然是他的短篇故事: 《漢斯•普法爾歷險記》。
It's a story of an unemployed bellows maker in Rotterdam, who, depressed and tired of life -- this is Poe, after all -- and deeply in debt, he decides to build a hermetically enclosed balloon-borne carriage that is launched into the air by dynamite and from there, floats through the vacuum of space all the way to the lunar surface. And importantly, he did not develop this story alone, for in the appendix to his tale, he explicitly acknowledged Godwin's "A Man in the Moone" from over 200 years earlier as an influence, calling it "a singular and somewhat ingenious little book." And although this idea of a balloon-borne voyage to the Moon may seem not much more technically sophisticated than the goose machine, in fact, Poe was sufficiently detailed in the description of the construction of the device and in terms of the orbital dynamics of the voyage that it could be diagrammed in the very first spaceflight encyclopedia as a mission in the 1920s.
主角是一名鹿特丹的 失業鼓風器製造師。 他很憂鬱且厭世—— 畢竟這是愛倫坡作品—— 還欠了很多債, 他決定要打造一個 用氣球運載的密封車廂, 可以用炸藥發射到空中, 然後穿過太空的真空, 一路漂到月球表面。 重要的是,這個故事不是 他一個人發展出來的, 因為,在他的故事附錄中, 他特別對戈德溫 兩百年前的作品《月中人》致謝, 因為這部作品影響了他, 他稱之為「非凡且聰明的一本小書」。 雖然這個用氣球載人到月球的想法 在技術上並沒有 比野鵝機器成熟多少, 事實上,愛倫坡用充分的細節 來描述這個裝置的建造方法, 以及這趟旅程的軌道動力學, 仔細的程度讓第一本太空飛行百科全書 能依照他的描述畫出圖解, 列為 1920 年代的太空任務。
And it was this attention to detail, or to "verisimilitude," as he called it, that would influence the next great story: Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon," written in 1865. And it's a story that has a remarkable legacy and a remarkable similarity to the real voyages to the Moon that would take place over a hundred years later. Because in the story, the first voyage to the Moon takes place from Florida, with three people on board, in a trip that takes three days -- exactly the parameters that would prevail during the Apollo program itself. And in an explicit tribute to Poe's influence on him, Verne situated the group responsible for this feat in the book in Baltimore, at the Baltimore Gun Club, with its members shouting, "Cheers for Edgar Poe!" as they began to lay out their plans for their conquest of the Moon. And just as Verne was influenced by Poe, so, too, would Verne's own story go on to influence and inspire the first generation of rocket scientists. The two great pioneers of liquid fuel rocketry in Russia and in Germany, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Hermann Oberth, both traced their own commitment to the field of spaceflight to their reading "From the Earth to the Moon" as teenagers, and then subsequently committing themselves to trying to make that story a reality.
他特別注意細節的特質—— 他自稱是重視「逼真感」—— 讓他影響了下一個偉大的故事: 朱爾•凡爾納 1865 年 寫的《從地球到月球》。 這個故事對後世有很大的貢獻, 且和一百年之後 才發生的真實登月之旅 有很高的相似性。 因為,在這個故事中,第一次 登月之旅是從佛羅里達出發, 機上有三個人, 旅程為三天—— 與阿波羅計畫所規劃的相同。 為了對艾倫坡帶來的影響 明確表達致敬之意, 凡爾納安排了這本書的 幕後功臣們到巴爾的摩, 在巴爾的摩槍械俱樂部裡 會員一起大喊「敬艾倫坡!」 同時開始規劃 他們遠征月球的計畫。 正如同凡爾納受到艾倫坡的影響, 凡爾納自己的故事 後來也影響和鼓舞了 第一代的火箭科學家。 俄國和德國的兩位偉大 液態燃料火箭技術先鋒, 康斯坦丁齊奧爾科夫斯基 和赫爾曼奧伯特, 都說他們之所以決定 投身到太空飛行的領域, 是因為在青少年時期 閱讀了《從地球到月球》, 從此之後,就決定盡自己的努力 試圖實現那個故事。
And Verne's story was not the only one in the 19th century with a long arm of influence. On the other side of the Atlantic, H.G. Wells's "War of the Worlds" directly inspired a young man in Massachusetts, Robert Goddard. And it was after reading "War of the Worlds" that Goddard wrote in his diary, one day in the late 1890s, of resting while trimming a cherry tree on his family's farm and having a vision of a spacecraft taking off from the valley below and ascending into the heavens. And he decided then and there that he would commit the rest of his life to the development of the spacecraft that he saw in his mind's eye. And he did exactly that. Throughout his career, he would celebrate that day as his anniversary day, his cherry tree day, and he would regularly read and reread the works of Verne and of Wells in order to renew his inspiration and his commitment over the decades of labor and effort that would be required to realize the first part of his dream: the flight of a liquid fuel rocket, which he finally achieved in 1926.
十九世紀,影響長遠的故事 不只是凡爾納的故事。 在大西洋的另一頭, H. G. 威爾斯的 《世界大戰》直接啟發了 麻州的年輕人羅伯特•戈達德。 他在閱讀了《世界大戰》之後, 在 1890 年代末的某一天, 戈達德在他的日記中寫道, 他在修剪家庭農場中的櫻桃樹時, 腦中出現一幅景象: 一艘太空船從山谷起飛, 上升飛向天際。 就在那一刻, 他決定把餘生投入 開發那幅景象中的太空船。 而他真的做到了。 在他的職涯中, 他都會把櫻桃樹的那一天, 當作紀念日來慶祝, 而且他常會一讀再讀 凡爾納和威爾斯的作品, 讓他能夠在數十年的辛勞和努力中, 重新找回他的靈感和決心, 最後實現了他夢想的第一部分: 讓火箭使用液態燃料飛行, 他在 1926 年終於達成這個目標。
So it was while reading "From the Earth to the Moon" and "The War of the Worlds" that the first pioneers of astronautics were inspired to dedicate their lives to solving the problems of spaceflight. And it was their treatises and their works in turn that inspired the first technical communities and the first projects of spaceflight, thus creating a direct chain of influence that goes from Godwin to Poe to Verne to the Apollo program and to the present-day communities of spaceflight.
所以,因為讀了 《從地球到月球》和《世界大戰》, 讓航太學的先鋒受到啟發, 決定奉獻一生來解決太空飛行的問題。 而他們的論文和工作成果 接著啟發第一批技術工作者 及最早的太空飛行專案計畫, 進而創造出了直接的一連串影響, 從戈德溫,到艾倫坡,到凡爾納, 到阿波羅計畫, 到現今的太空飛行組織團體。
So why I have told you all this? Is it just because I think it's cool, or because I'm just weirdly fascinated by stories of 17th- and 19th-century science fiction? It is, admittedly, partly that. But I also think that these stories remind us of the cultural processes driving spaceflight and even technological innovation more broadly.
所以,我為什麼要告訴各位這些? 只因為我覺得很酷嗎? 或因為我是個奇怪的 17、19 世紀科幻小說迷? 我得承認,那是部分原因沒錯。 但我也認為這些故事 能讓我們記得 帶動太空飛行及科技創新的 歷史文明進程,
As an economist working at NASA, I spend time thinking about the economic origins of our movement out into the cosmos. And when you look before the investments of billionaire tech entrepreneurs and before the Cold War Space Race, and even before the military investments in liquid fuel rocketry, the economic origins of spaceflight are found in stories and in ideas. It was in these stories that the first concepts for spaceflight were articulated. And it was through these stories that the narrative of a future for humanity in space began to propagate from mind to mind, eventually creating an intergenerational intellectual community that would iterate on the ideas for spacecraft until such a time as they could finally be built. This process has now been going on for over 300 years, and the result is a culture of spaceflight. It's a culture that involves thousands of people over hundreds of years. Because for hundreds of years, some of us have looked at the stars and longed to go. And because for hundreds of years, some of us have dedicated our labors to the development of the concepts and systems required to make those voyages possible.
身為在美國太空總署工作的 經濟學家,我花了很多時間 思考我們向外朝宇宙前進 有什麼樣的經濟起源。 如果去探究在身價億萬的 科技企業家開始投資之前, 在冷戰期間的太空競賽之前, 甚至在軍方投資 液態燃料火箭技術之前, 太空飛行的經濟起源 都是在故事和構想中找到的。 太空飛行最早的構想 就描繪在這些故事中, 人類未來在太空中生存的景象, 也透過這些故事的描述, 廣大的深植人心, 最終創造出跨世代的知識團體, 反覆發展出太空船的新構想。 直到真的建造出太空船。 至今,這個過程已經 經過了三百多年, 結果產出的是一個太空飛行文化。 這個文化涉及了 數百年來的數千人。 因為數百年來,人們仰望 星星並渴望前往, 也因為數百年來, 我們投入辛勞, 去發展這些概念和系統, 讓太空旅行成為可能。
I also wanted to tell you about Godwin, Poe and Verne because I think their stories also tell us of the importance of the stories that we tell each other about the future more generally. Because these stories don't just transmit information or ideas. They can also nurture passions, passions that can lead us to dedicate our lives to the realization of important projects. Which means that these stories can and do influence social and technological forces centuries into the future. I think we need to realize this and remember it when we tell our stories. We need to work hard to write stories that don't just show us the possible dystopian paths we may take for a fear that the more dystopian stories we tell each other, the more we plant seeds for possible dystopian futures. Instead we need to tell stories that plant the seeds, if not necessarily for utopias, then at least for great new projects of technological, societal and institutional transformation. And if we think of this idea that the stories we tell each other can transform the future is fanciful or impossible, then I think we need to remember the example of this, our voyage to the Moon, an idea from the 17th century that propagated culturally for over 300 years until it could finally be realized.
我和大家談戈德溫、 艾倫坡,和凡爾納, 是因為我認為他們的故事 能讓我們普遍了解到, 在我們之間流傳的、 關於未來的故事的重要性。 因為這些故事不只是 在傳遞資訊或想法。 它們也能培養出熱情, 讓我們願意投身的熱情, 讓我們實現重要計畫的熱情。 這就表示,這些故事能夠也確實會 影響未來數世紀的 社會和科技主力人士。 我認為,當我們在訴說自己的 故事時,必須了解並記住這點。 我們得要努力去寫的故事 不能只是呈現出我們 理想破滅的反烏托邦之路, 因為如果我們告訴彼此 越多反烏托邦的故事, 恐怕會為未來播下越多絕望的種子。 反之,我們需要說的故事, 就算不是為烏托邦播下種子, 至少也是為了偉大的 新計畫,在科技、社會, 和制度面帶來轉變。 如果我們認為, 透過跟彼此說故事的方式 來轉變未來, 是太過虛幻或不可能的想法, 那麼,我認為我們 得要記得這個例子, 我們登月之旅的想法來自 17 世紀, 在文化中孕育了三百多年, 直到它被實現。
So, we need to write new stories, stories that, 300 years in the future, people will be able to look back upon and remark how they inspired us to new heights and to new shores, how they showed us new paths and new possibilities, and how they shaped our world for the better.
所以,我們必須要寫新的故事, 在三百年後的未來, 讓人們可以回顧並討論 這些故事如何啟發我們 追求新高度和新疆界, 如何讓我們看見新的路徑 和新的可能性, 及如何把我們的世界變得更好。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)