Exploring The Unknown
Exploring The Unknown
The Voices Of Walter Schumann
Music Composed by Leith Stevens
Narrated by Paul Frees
Additional Lyrics by Bob Silvert
RCA Victor LPM-1025
1955
From the back cover: Into the unknown night, into limitless space, into worlds beyond the imagination-but not the reach – of man. Careful and studied preparations for departure, every last detail attended to, every moment ripe with expectation and wonder. Here is the moment toward which we have been striving, here is the moment which will launch us into a new time, a new era, a new life – perhaps even into a new dimension.
The blast-off tears the night into shreds of fiery flame; the ferry rocket lifts itself hugely from the platform; earth becomes smaller and smaller until finally it is almost completely obscured in the mists of time and space. The rocket gathers speed, the atomic accelerators are opened wide, and soon we are beyond gravity, swimming dizzily in the vast oceans of space, destination: the satellite space station, first stop in our exploration of the unknown.
Here we arrive, and the rocket ferry is made fast; here is momentary rest at the transfer point in our journey to the outer realms of bottomless space. Here we are but one insignificant spot in boundless infinity, lost amid the rushing torrents of blackness. Here we stand where there is no time, no belonging – anchored firmly to the earth's orbit, edging forward towards a new frontier.
Finally, we take off once again, our orbit fixed to Venus. Now we begin to think again, now we begin to wonder anew – wonder at what lies before us at the end of the night. We grow more philosophical, consider our place, our meaning in the vastnesses of the universe; we wonder at the seemingly endless frontiers to conquer – if we have enough fuel we can conceivably move forward forever-and although mathematicians tell us there is no such thing as infinity, all their calculations are lost and meaningless in the unending vistas of space.
We are welcomed to a new world, we sense a strangeness, an unknown mystery which can neither be defined nor spoken. It is like looking in a mirror and seeing, not ourselves, but an endless succession of other mirrors in which nothing is reflected but thin air and hazy dreams. Here we stand on the brink of timelessness, here we feel that we cannot possibly grow old – only younger and more adventuresome. For here we have found one new world and there are countless others which lay just beyond our grasp.
Again we take off into the never-ending night of space which is stretched out before us like a still undiscovered sea – the horizon is always there but somehow it manages to elude our clutching fingers. No matter with what speed we accelerate we cannot reach it – we pass giant bodies and suns, we pass on and on through a seeming eternity, as new worlds break across our bow, as the excitement of discovery and meaning claims our every moment.
Now we near the earth once again, and from being giants of space and time, we return to the infinitesimal smallness of our real natures, we realize for the first time since we left that we are but a speck of dust in a sea of nothingness. The earth looks small but friendly; we circle down inside gravity and come ever nearer to what is green and warm and welcome. It is, perhaps, but one stop in an infinite space parade, but it is our stop and we happily disembark. – BILL ZEITUNG
The blast-off tears the night into shreds of fiery flame; the ferry rocket lifts itself hugely from the platform; earth becomes smaller and smaller until finally it is almost completely obscured in the mists of time and space. The rocket gathers speed, the atomic accelerators are opened wide, and soon we are beyond gravity, swimming dizzily in the vast oceans of space, destination: the satellite space station, first stop in our exploration of the unknown.
Here we arrive, and the rocket ferry is made fast; here is momentary rest at the transfer point in our journey to the outer realms of bottomless space. Here we are but one insignificant spot in boundless infinity, lost amid the rushing torrents of blackness. Here we stand where there is no time, no belonging – anchored firmly to the earth's orbit, edging forward towards a new frontier.
Finally, we take off once again, our orbit fixed to Venus. Now we begin to think again, now we begin to wonder anew – wonder at what lies before us at the end of the night. We grow more philosophical, consider our place, our meaning in the vastnesses of the universe; we wonder at the seemingly endless frontiers to conquer – if we have enough fuel we can conceivably move forward forever-and although mathematicians tell us there is no such thing as infinity, all their calculations are lost and meaningless in the unending vistas of space.
We are welcomed to a new world, we sense a strangeness, an unknown mystery which can neither be defined nor spoken. It is like looking in a mirror and seeing, not ourselves, but an endless succession of other mirrors in which nothing is reflected but thin air and hazy dreams. Here we stand on the brink of timelessness, here we feel that we cannot possibly grow old – only younger and more adventuresome. For here we have found one new world and there are countless others which lay just beyond our grasp.
Again we take off into the never-ending night of space which is stretched out before us like a still undiscovered sea – the horizon is always there but somehow it manages to elude our clutching fingers. No matter with what speed we accelerate we cannot reach it – we pass giant bodies and suns, we pass on and on through a seeming eternity, as new worlds break across our bow, as the excitement of discovery and meaning claims our every moment.
Now we near the earth once again, and from being giants of space and time, we return to the infinitesimal smallness of our real natures, we realize for the first time since we left that we are but a speck of dust in a sea of nothingness. The earth looks small but friendly; we circle down inside gravity and come ever nearer to what is green and warm and welcome. It is, perhaps, but one stop in an infinite space parade, but it is our stop and we happily disembark. – BILL ZEITUNG
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