Yurin Gagarin brought humanity to space for the first time in 1961. Eight years later, Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon. Now, NASA is preparing to return to the Moon, before taking the next leap to Mars. If we keep endeavouring to explore and understand our Universe, we might one day master interstellar travel and reach the stars.
Yuri Milner believes investing in space exploration can accelerate our progress towards becoming a spacefaring civilisation. Named after Gagarin, Milner discusses space travel and humanity’s place in the Universe in his book Eureka Manifesto: The Mission for Our Civilisation (2021).
Yuri Milner’s Eureka Manifesto: Our Mission
Although Eureka Manifesto is a short read (around 100 pages), its scope and subject matter are vast. The book is about humanity’s role in the cosmos as sentient beings capable of exploring and understanding. Milner takes us from the Big Bang to the heat death of the Universe, touching on key beats — like the rise of multicellular organisms — along the way.
Milner’s main argument in Eureka Manifesto is that humanity needs a shared mission: to “explore and understand our Universe.” We must embrace the mission, he explains, to ensure our survival, drastically improve our lives, and build a galactic civilisation.
A New Space Age
Humanity has some way to go before we can colonise the galaxy. For now, our farthest footprint beyond Earth is on the Moon, where we left it over 50 years ago. Milner writes that “what was once a mark of our ambition — rising to the challenge laid down by Gagarin — is now a silent symbol of our stagnation.”
This is changing, though. Today, government space programmes and private projects from entrepreneurs like Elon Musk have once again advanced spaceflight technologies and captured the public imagination.
Milner has also invested into space exploration in the form of his Breakthrough Starshot initiative. Launched in 2016 with Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg, the $100 million research and engineering programme is developing interstellar travel technology. Starshot has plans to launch an uncrewed flyby mission to Alpha Centauri within the next generation.
Investing resources into space exploration and fundamental science can help us advance humanity’s shared mission, Milner says. Aside from Starshot, he has invested in these areas through two other Breakthrough Initiatives: Listen and Watch.
Listen uses powerful radio telescopes to search for signals that could come from alien civilisations. Meanwhile, Watch locates and characterises habitable planets around stars within 20 light years of Earth.
Becoming A Galactic Civilisation
Milner believes humanity’s destiny is to be a galactic civilisation. Not only because spreading out into space can help us survive in the long term, but because there is so much wonder to discover. While humans are ill-suited for space travel, our robots will likely be the ones to explore and settle on new worlds.
“What a profound waste it would be,” Milner writes, “if [these worlds] were left unexplored. What a waste of our civilisation’s potential if we were to remain defined by our humble beginnings on this one little planet rather than by a grand future in the galaxy.”
Our ancestors’ journeys to new lands resulted in new cultures, art, music, and novel ways of living and working together. We could never have conceived such innovations without the inspiration drawn from new experiences and places, Milner says.
Similarly, as our descendants explore and understand more of our Universe, they might birth extraordinary new cultures. Milner imagines the “diversity of civilisations” they might generate as they crystallise a growing sphere of enlightenment far beyond Earth.
About Yuri Milner
Yuri Milner is the science philanthropist behind the Breakthrough Prize, the Breakthrough Initiatives, and the Breakthrough Junior Challenge. He is a member of the Giving Pledge, a promise by the world’s wealthiest people to give most of their money to charitable causes. Milner’s Giving Pledge letter highlights his commitment to investing in scientific brilliance.
In 2022, Milner established the non-profit Tech For Refugees. The initiative leverages the expertise and networks of leading tech firms and organisations to make a difference in the lives of refugees.
