14.1 Introduction

The Church of Scientology is not exactly a “UFO religion” in quite the same sense as Heaven’s Gate, the Raelians, the Aetherius Society, or other groups with more explicit beliefs in extraterrestrials and flying crafts from other worlds. Founded in the United States in 1953 by L. Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology is a complex mixture of self-help therapy, modern esoteric and occult currents, Asian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, and elements of Hubbard’s own active science fiction imagination (Urban 2011; Urban 2012; Lewis 2009; Kent 1999). However, Scientology did emerge out of the same general Cold War context of alternative religions, nuclear anxieties, and space exploration that helped give birth to many other UFO movements of the mid-twentieth century (Urban 2006; see Lewis 1995; Dean 1998; Partridge 2003; Zeller 2014). At the same time, Scientology also developed an elaborate cosmology and history of the universe—what Hubbard called “space opera”—that contains complex discussions of life on other planets, alien interactions with planet Earth, and the possibility of traveling outside the body to other worlds (Urban 2017a; Raine 2015). As such, Scientology should be considered a key part of the larger alternative spiritual milieu that was both shaped by and helped shape other more explicit UFO religions during the Cold War era.

This chapter explores three aspects of Scientology’s early history, beliefs, and practices that intersect directly with modern UFO religions: first, Hubbard’s own extensive science fiction writings, which were a key part of the larger imagining of space travel in the 1930s and 40s; second, the elaborate space opera cosmology of the early Church of Scientology as it developed in the 1950s and 60s; and third, the more esoteric teachings about the past history of the universe contained in Scientology’s higher and most confidential levels of training called “Operating Thetan” or OT, which contain the most explicit discussions of alien civilizations. It is also in these higher OT levels that the Scientologist is supposed to acquire the ability to “exteriorize” or travel outside the body to distant places, including to other planets (Hubbard 1993; Hubbard 2007d). Indeed, at the highest levels of training, the Scientologist is supposed to become a kind of “disembodied flying object,” able to separate the spiritual self (thetan) from the physical body and journey at will to other realms (Hubbard 1993; Urban 2011: 77–79; Urban 2012).

To conclude, I will suggest that Scientology offers a particularly clear insight into the cultural and religious context of Cold War America, with its larger obsessions with space travel, nuclear war, and secrecy. Perhaps more than any other, Scientology is America’s “Cold War religion” (Urban 2006; Urban 2011).

14.2 Space Opera and Soldiers of Light: UFO Themes in Hubbard’s Science Fiction

If most non-Scientologists know anything about L. Ron Hubbard, they probably know that he was a hugely prolific author of science fiction (and also fantasy, Western, and adventure) stories in the decades shortly before founding the Church of Scientology. Indeed, Hubbard was one of the most—if not the most—prolific author of the “golden age of sci fi” of the 1930s and 40s, writing so much and so quickly that he had to publish under a wide array of pseudonyms because his stories were filling up the same issues of each sci fi magazine of the day (Urban 2017a; Raine 2015; Whitehead 1974). While science fiction was by no means his only genre, he did contribute significantly to the larger UFO culture in the United States, filling magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction and Marvel Science Stories with entertaining tales of space travel, life on other planets, alien races, super powers, and paranormal abilities (Hubbard 1948; 1950; 1951).

As many observers have noted, there are also clear continuities between Hubbard’s science fiction tales and his later lectures on the Church of Scientology (Whitehead 1974; Urban 2017). Hubbard’s general phrase for fictional narratives about the future (and/or) past history of the universe and life on other worlds is “space opera”—a phrase that also recurs in his Scientology writings, when he explains the church’s complex metaphysics, cosmology, and the history of the universe (Raine 2015; Urban 2011).

At the same time, many of the themes from his most popular Sci Fi tales would carry over directly into the later structure and beliefs of Scientology. Perhaps the clearest example is his series of tales centred on the figure of “Ole Doc Methusaleh.” Published in Astounding Science Fiction from 1947–1950 under the pseudonym René Lafayette, these tales centre on an adventurous space hero and physician who is a member of the “the most elite organization of the cosmos” called the Soldiers of Light. Comprised of 600 selfless heroes who have dedicated themselves to the “ultimate preservation of mankind,” the Soldiers of Light take as their emblem the symbol of two crossed rods. On his spaceship “the Hound of Heaven,” Ole Doc embarks on an “unending journey through the trackless galaxy,” enjoying a series of “astonishing adventures on many worlds” (Hubbard 1992: xv; see Hubbard 2004: 210).

As we will see in more detail below, Old Doc and his Soldiers of Light would later provide sort of the fictional blueprint for many aspects of the Church of Scientology, which was founded just a few years later. Among others, the Soldiers of Light are a clear precursor to Scientology’s elite inner core known as the “Sea Organization,” which is similarly dedicated to the ultimate preservation of mankind; and Ole Doc’s adventures on distant worlds are a fictional precursor to the key Scientology concept of the liberated self or spirit, which can travel at will outside the body and beyond the Earth to distant worlds (Urban 2011; Urban 2017a).

14.3 Exploring the Time Track before Earth: Space Opera in Early Scientology

Beginning in the early 1950s, Hubbard turned his energies from science fiction to a new science of the mind called Dianetics. The transition between Hubbard’s science fiction writings and his work on Dianetics was, in many ways, a fairly smooth one. Dianetics itself first appeared in the May 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction—a popular magazine to which Hubbard was a regular contributor. The cover of this issue featured an apelike, alien creature with yellow cat eyes, whom readers would learn is the Duke of Kraakahaym from the Empire of Skontar (Hubbard 1950: 43–87). As George Pendle notes, Dianetics was not presented as science fiction, but it did appeal to the same sorts of readers of this and similar magazines: “its language was clearly tailored to the science fiction fan. Like the Charles Atlas bodybuilding advertisements that also ran in the pulp pages, Dianetics promised to transform the reader’s ‘normal brain’ into an ‘optimum brain’ and thus help man continue his process of evolution toward a higher organism” (2005: 272). The primary technique of Dianetics was called “auditing,” in which a therapist (called the “auditor”) would ask a series of questions of the individual being audited, in order to pin-point and work through memories of pain or loss (called “engrams”) that had been burned into their unconscious mind (called the “reactive mind”). Once identified and relived, these negative memories were said to be “cleared” from the reactive mind; and once all such negative memories were removed, the individual was believed to achieve a state of optimal physical and mental well-being called “Clear.”

From the very outset, Hubbard claimed that his new science of Dianetics would lead to a vastly superior state of human existence and well-being. In an issue of Marvel Science Stories published in 1951, he presented Dianetics as the path to a new kind of human, a Homo superior or Homo novis, far surpassing the ordinary abilities, health, and intellect of mere Homo sapiens. Indeed, “Compared to a Homo sapiens, Homo novis is very high and godlike” (Hubbard 2007: 62–63; see Hubbard 1951: 111–113). As fellow science fiction writer, Jack Williamson, put it, Dianetics offered nothing less than “the promise to liberate the superman trapped inside us” (1984: 186).

Despite its initial success, Dianetics was already beginning to sputter as a movement by 1952 and soon entered into bankruptcy. However, just a year later, Dianetics was replaced by and subsumed into a new and explicitly religious movement called the Church of Scientology, which was first incorporated in December 1953 (Urban 2011). While using the same basic auditing techniques of Dianetics, Scientology also introduced several new, more explicitly “religious” aspects, including the idea of an eternal spirit or self, a belief in past lives or reincarnation, and an elaborate cosmology that described the past history of the universe in elaborate detail (Urban 2011: 73–77; Kent 1999). Despite the use of explicitly religious language, however, Hubbard’s early Scientology lectures continued many of the science fiction themes already present in Dianetics. If anything, they took them much further, and we can see even more explicit continuities between Hubbard’s fictional worlds and the cosmology of the Church of Scientology. As Susan Raine concludes, one could say “Hubbard designed Scientology as a space opera, transforming fiction into reality as a means to set out his elaborate ideas in a real-world setting” (2015:18).

One of the most important innovations in the shift from Dianetics to Scientology in the 1950s was Hubbard’s concept of theta—his general term for spirit or spiritual reality—and the thetan—his term for the individual spiritual entity, which is our true identity as an immortal being. Beginning in 1951, Hubbard claimed that he had scientifically identified and isolated the spiritual self, the thetan, which is at once separable from the physical body and possessed of unlimited powers (1956: 428; see 1975: 431). In Hubbard’s early Scientology cosmology, the thetan is a godlike entity of infinite potential, originally able to create, maintain, and control its own universe. As David Bromley explains “At one time thetans were godlike, celestial entities, possessed their distinctive individuality and created and controlled their ‘Home Universes’ ” (2009: 91). At some point roughly 60 trillion years ago, however, the once all-powerful thetans became enmeshed in this present universe of matter, energy, space, and time (MEST), which Hubbard describes as a kind of “trap,” “prison,” and “illusion” (2007b: 62–63).

As Hubbard explained in lectures from the early 1950s, he believed that he had also reconstructed the entire “time track” or past history of this universe going back these many trillions of years. During that vast span of time, we have each lived countless lives in various forms—sometimes as humans, sometimes as aliens, sometimes as animals, sometimes as beings with the power to destroy entire worlds:

So you’ve been in and out of bodies, you’ve been thought people, you’ve been this, you’ve been that. You’ve been sheep, goats, spacemen, space officers. You’ve been governors, kings, princes, ditch-diggers, slaves, glaziers, carpenters, bricklayers, amusement park barkers, operators. You have turned planets into parks and parks into cinders. You, at one time on the track, have had weapons in your hands of sufficient magnitude to just say “Boom!” and the whole planet goes up … You talk about drama.

2007a: 341

In other works, such as Have you Lived Before this Life (1958), Hubbard records the past life memories of various individuals uncovered through Scientology auditing. Many of these include remarkable adventures on other worlds, often occurring tens of thousands of even trillions of years in the past, such as inhabiting a “Space Command post on Earth” 17,543 years ago, or being interrogated by Martian automatons, or swimming as a Manta Ray under the sea of another world, or flying a saucer over an ocean on a distant planet (1958: 108).

Unlike other UFO religion, Scientology never developed a really coherent or consistent cosmology. Throughout his lectures of the 1950s and 60s, however, Hubbard does discuss various alien civilizations and key events in the history of the universe. There is, for example, the Marcab Confederacy, which is a group of planets united into a vast civilization that emerged about 200,000 years ago and looks very much like our own society; indeed, they even have “automobiles, business suits, fedora hats, telephones” (1975: 243). Another significant event occurred one trillion years ago, when we were captured by the “Arsclycans” (beings from Arsclycus, a “City in Space”). Meanwhile, on Earth, there was the “totally electronic society of Atlantis,” which was also “a kind of space opera society,” complete with all sorts of drama, such as “people blasting walls down with disintegrators” and so on (1985: tape 1).

These space opera themes also carried over in many ways into the structure and organization of the Church of Scientology. The clearest example is the Sea Organization or Sea Org, which was formed in 1967 as the innermost, elite core of dedicated Scientologists. Structured as a kind of paramilitary naval order—complete with naval uniforms and strict military discipline—the Sea Org has a great deal in common with the fictional Soldiers of Light from Hubbard’s science fiction tales noted above. Like the Soldiers of Light, who work under the symbol of the crossed rods to fight disease and save humankind, the Sea Org serves under the eight-pointed Scientology cross to fight both physical and spiritual disease. Like the elite Soldiers of Light, Hubbard’s Sea Org was also designed as the most committed and disciplined core of his church, each member sworn by a “billion-year contract” to return lifetime after lifetime to serve Scientology in order to save the entire planet (Many 2009). As Raine suggests, the Sea Org was originally imagined as a kind of “space navy, melding SF space ideas with Earthbound naval ones” (2017: 15). In fact, Scientology publications from the late 1960s to 1980s even advertise the Sea Org as a futuristic “Space Org,” voyaging aboard a Star-Trek like spaceship not simply around planet earth but also to distant realms on a mission to protect and save entire civilizations (Advance! 1987: back cover; Advance! 1969: 11).

Hubbard’s 1973 book, Mission into Time, describes the first voyage of the Sea Org as a kind of cosmic journey—an “exploration into space and time”—in search of not only distant earthly terrain but also of past lives and the deep history of the universe (1973: 22–23). As former Scientologist, Jon Atack, recalls, the ship travelled to the Mediterranean, where Hubbard told them that there was a concealed “space station” in the northern part of the island of Corsica. Apparently, this station housed “an immense Mothership and a fleet of smaller spacecraft” that had been left by an ancient advanced civilization for Hubbard to discover:

The spaceships were made of a non-corrosive alloy, as yet undiscovered by earthlings. Only one palm print would cause a slab of rock to slide away, revealing these chariots of the gods. The owners not only knew about reincarnation, they had even predicted Hubbard’s palm print … The ship was protected by atomic warheads. It awaited the return of a great leader.

Atack 1990: 179; Raine 2017

Indeed, the crew were hopeful that Hubbard as the great awaited leader would be able to might Earth on the Mothership and so found a new, extraterrestrial Space Org (Atack 1990: 179). Sadly, however, the mission had to be cut short when Hubbard had problems with the Spanish port authorities, and the buried space station remained undiscovered.

In sum, while Scientology may not be best described as a UFO religion on a par with groups such as the Aetherius Society, it clearly incorporated a huge amount of science fiction and UFO mythology and was part of the same general alternative spiritual milieu of the 1950s and 60s. It is thus perhaps most accurate to say that Scientology came out of and also helped contribute to the larger UFO imagination of post-WWII America.

14.4 From Extra-Body Thetans to Super-Powers: Esoteric Cosmology and Out of Body Travel in the Operating Thetan Levels

Beginning in the late 1960s, Hubbard also began to develop a series of higher level, confidential levels of training designed to unleash the full potential and power of the spirit or thetan. Called “Operating Thetan” or OT, these levels are a graded sequence of advanced auditing that takes one beyond the basic goals of Dianetics into the deeper mysteries of the past history of the universe and the fullest abilities of the spirit. According to the church’s official map of the Scientology path called the Bridge to Total Freedom, there are fifteen of these OT levels listed; however, it appears that only eight of them were actually released before Hubbard’s death (Urban 2017b). Although once surrounded with intense secrecy (not to mention intense litigation), the OT levels became part of the public record in the course of a court case involving a former Scientologist named Steven Fishman in 1993; they were leaked to the media and then onto the Internet, where they now circulate promiscuously throughout myriad sites and databases (Urban 2011: 178–200; Rothstein 2009).

The most infamous of these confidential levels is OT III, which claims to reveal a key episode the history of the universe and the deeper secrets of human existence (this is also the narrative that was revealed and mercilessly satirized in an episode of the animated television show, South Park, in 2005). Because of its powerful and potentially dangerous contents, OT III is surrounded by a number of safeguards to insure its secrecy from all but the most qualified Scientologists: “They sign a waiver promising never to reveal the secrets of OT III, nor to hold Scientology responsible for any trauma or damage one might endure at this stage of auditing. Finally, they are given a manila folder, which they must read in a private, locked room” (Reitman 2006; see Atack 1990: 173). According to the documents provided in the Fishman case (and other sources), the story goes something like this: 75,000,000 years ago, there was a Galactic Confederacy consisting of 76 planets, ruled by an evil dictator named Xenu (or Xemu, in some versions of the story). In order to solve the problem of over-population in his federation, he brought billions of people to Earth (then called “Teegeeack”) and placed hydrogen bombs in the Earth’s volcanoes in order to destroy them. The thetans of these individuals, however, survived and eventually adhered to the bodies of modern human beings. Hence, each one of us today has a mass of “extra-body thetans” stuck onto us, which are in turn causing us pain and unhappiness in this lifetime. These extra-body thetans must therefore be cleaned off through advanced auditing in order to liberate the full potential of one’s own true thetan (Spaink 1995; see Rothstein 2009; Urban 2011: 102–105).

In addition to a kind of esoteric, space opera cosmology, the OT levels are also supposed to reveal the increasingly powerful—and ultimately, unlimited—abilities of the thetan. The thetan is, after all, originally a being of infinite potential; the goal of these advanced levels of auditing is therefore to release it from its entrapment in MEST and so reawaken its tremendous power to shape and reshape reality. An “Operating Thetan” is precisely one that becomes increasingly freed from the limits of the world of Matter, Energy, Space and Time (the MEST universe) and so able to wield an array of “super powers.” Both Hubbard’s early lectures and various testimonials from Scientologists claim an array of powers for the liberated thetan. These include not just optimal psychological and physical health, but also paranormal abilities such as the power to see through walls, telepathy, and “remote viewing” or seeing events from distances outside the body. Scientology publications such as Advance! and Source include numerous success stories from individuals who acquire powers both miraculous and mundane. Some recount being able to prevent rain from falling, while others claim to be able to shut off a neighbour’s noisy sprinkler system and fix broken appliances (Source 1985: 13). “I love it,” wrote one enthusiastic Scientologist, “like Superman!” (Advance! 1973: 14–17; see Urban 2012).

One of the most often reported powers of the liberated thetan is “exteriorization” or the ability to travel outside the physical body. Although he eschewed the term “astral projection,” Hubbard’s descriptions of exteriorization are very similar to earlier ideas of astral projection that had circulated through esoteric groups such as the Theosophical Society and in the works of the great twentieth century occultist, Aleister Crowley (Muldoon 1951; Urban 2012). Beginning by first moving just a few feet in back of the head, the thetan eventually learns to travel at great distances beyond the body; thus, numerous testimonials from Scientology publications describe various journeys outside the body, for example to visit Rome and other exotic destinations overseas.

Eventually, the exteriorized thetan is able to journey beyond the Earth itself, visiting the distant corners of the Solar System and beyond. As he advises the thetan in his 1954 lecture, The Creation of Human Ability: “Be near earth, be near the Moon, be near the Sun … Now find a rock, be inside of it, be outside of it … Be near the Center of the Earth, be outside the earth … be near Mars, be at the center of Mars” (2007c: 65–66). Thus, an illustration to the Creation lectures shows the symbol of the thetan (the Greek letter theta, Θ) flying through the solar system (2007c: 55). The thetan should then embark on a “Grand Tour” of the universe, sliding down plumes on the Sun and going inside black holes. Significantly, Hubbard also makes a point to say that this is not mere fantasy or science fiction—the thetan really is visiting these extraterrestrial destinations:

One of the common practices in the Grand Tour is asking him to be inside a black star; outside it, inside it … And oh boy does that rip him to pieces, because there are black stars up there which are so heavy and dense that electrons can’t escape from them.

Hubbard 2007d: 472; see Urban 2012

So you say, ‘Find a plume and slide down on it on to the face of the Sun’… You could have him find Mars. ‘Be outside Mars and move down the surface.’ But he’s immediately going to discover the force field of Mars … It’s not science fiction.

2007d: 471; my italics

As such, the liberated thetan itself becomes a kind of “disembodied flying object,” capable of traveling through the vast distances of both space and time. Just as the thetan has already lived countless lives over millions of years on other planets, it now has the potential to journey far beyond the limits of the physical body and Earth itself, exploring new worlds and the vast spatial-temporal expanse of the universe.

Ultimately, however, the powers of the OT go far beyond simply exteriorizing and flying beyond this planet. In its fullest liberation, the thetan has truly unlimited and indeed godlike power, the ability to construct, reconstruct, and deconstruct the MEST universe itself. Like the original thetan who ruled its own universe before becoming entangled in the MEST world, the fully realized thetan could in fact create its own universe and manipulate it in any way he chose. As Hubbard put it in lectures from 1952 and 1954,

[The Operating Thetan is] a person who is able to create his own universe, or living in the MEST universe, is able to create illusions perceivable by others at will, to handle MEST universe objects without mechanical means and to have and feel no need of bodies or the MEST universe.

2006: 175

He would be able to be anywhere as a finite point or be anywhere as a generalized area … He could be anything at will.

2007d: 373

Indeed, the powers of the fully realized Operating Thetan are ultimately godlike, being the powers to create, maintain, manipulate, and destroy universes. As former member of Hubbard’s staff, Cyril Vosper, put it, “He was saying that you and everyone else, with the use of Scientology (or Dianetics at that time) could become a god. And we were all, if you like, fallen gods” (Robinson 1997; see Urban 2019). Indeed, the powers of the liberated thetan would be even “more godlike” than those of the so-called “god” who created this inferior MEST universe in which we are currently and mistakenly enmeshed. In Hubbard’s words,

What passed for God for the MEST universe was not the goddest God there was by an awful long ways … Whoever made that MEST universe … was a usurper of one’s own universe. And this has … sold the individual out of his ability to make a universe.

2001: 14; Urban 2019

Here the goals of Scientology appear to go well beyond those of most other UFO religions. Rather than simply communicating with divine beings from other worlds—as the Aetherius Society claims to do—or ascending to a heavenly realm via spacecraft—as Heaven’s Gate hoped to do—the Scientologist seeks to create its own universe within which it would be its own, all-powerful divinity.

14.5 Conclusions: Scientology, Secrecy, UFO s and the Cold War

To conclude, I would like to make some broader historical and comparative observations, by situating the early Church of Scientology more concretely in the context of Cold War America in the decades just after World War II. Although Scientology might not exactly be a “UFO religion” in quite the same sense as the Aetherius Society or the Raelians, it did emerge out of much the same Cold War context that gave birth to many other movements looking to other worlds and visits from spacecraft. As Jodi Dean notes in her study of UFO culture in the twentieth century, “UFO discourse and community formed during the Cold War,” very much reflecting the larger fascination with space travel, technology, and other planets—as well as the deeper anxieties about Communism and nuclear war—that pervaded the decades after WWII (1998: 22). Moreover, the Cold War also played out in many ways in space itself, as the U.S. and Soviet Union vied with one another to dominate space exploration and so assert their superiority on this world, as well. As Newsweek magazine put it in a “Special Section on Space and the Atom,” “The cold war is being waged in outer space. All mankind may ride along vicariously with the first space man, and science as a whole may benefit from his findings. But the nation that gets up there first will score an important political, psychological and propaganda victory” (Dean 1998: 73; see also Whitfield 1991).

Perhaps more explicitly than another new religious movement of the twentieth century, Scientology articulated these larger aspirations and anxieties of Cold War America (Urban 2006; Urban 2011). The period from the birth of Dianetics in 1950 to the death of L. Ron Hubbard in 1986 correspond almost exactly to the period of the Cold War, from the detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949 to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989. From the early 1950s onward, in fact, Hubbard marketed both Dianetics and Scientology as the most needed technologies for the Cold War and as perhaps the only means to prevent humankind from destroying itself by nuclear war:

With man now equipped with weapons sufficient to destroy all mankind on Earth, the emergence of a new science capable of handling man is vital. Scientology is such a science. It was born in the same crucible as the atomic bomb … The only race that matters at this moment is the one being run between Scientology and the atomic bomb. The history of man … may well depend on which one wins

1997: 163

Hubbard’s early Dianetics movement and Church of Scientology also reflected many of the most acute anxieties and paranoias of the Cold War era. Hubbard himself was obsessed with Communism, writing numerous letters to the FBI and even to J. Edgar Hoover himself in order to identify subversive Communist elements around him (including his own ex-wife) (Urban 2006; Urban 2011). During the 1960s, Hubbard also became increasingly obsessed with secrecy, security, and surveillance, introducing a series of auditing techniques called “Security Checks” or “Sec Checks” that were designed to identify and weed out subversive influences from within the church itself (see Hubbard 1960; Wallis 1976: 149). Still more remarkably, the church’s intelligence bureau, the Guardian’s Office, also engaged in aggressive acts of espionage, infiltrating the offices of the IRS and other government agencies during its long battle for tax exemption in United States (Urban 2011: 155–177).

However, perhaps the clearest example of Scientology’s uniquely Cold War form of spirituality is the Operating Thetan material discussed above. First released in the late 1960s, the OT materials coincided with the height of both Cold War tensions and fascinations with sci fi in popular culture. Not only is this material labelled “secret” and surrounded with all manner of safeguards—such as signing a waiver and vowing never to reveal it, etc.—but the sci fi contents of the OT III material in particular also reveal Hubbard’s lifelong fascination with “space opera,” alien civilizations, and super powers. However, while other Cold War UFO religions such as the Aetherius Society hoped to learn from Cosmic Masters from other worlds, Scientology had far grander aspirations. Rather than simply contacting aliens from other planets to help save ours, Scientology promised to unleash the super powers of the thetan, which could transcend this “prison” or “dumping ground” of Earth and finally go beyond the MEST universe itself. Indeed, Hubbard offered perhaps the most radical and grandiose response to the Cold War—the possibility that one could become a superman and even a god, capable of not simply escaping this war-torn Earth but of creating one’s own new and better universe. While down in the arsenal lay the atomic bomb, Hubbard and others were looking up “to the stars” and well beyond.