We have measured ourselves against the stars for our entire history. They have been our point of reference since the beginning. As above, so below. As within, so without. Our destiny, our fate, our undivided and complete being, encompassed by pin-points of light slipping across the vastness of night.

For navigation and observation, the centre of the universe is still the Earth. The celestial sphere extending out from the core of our planet and into the entire expanse of the universe. To move and to see we must put ourselves at the epicentre of all that is and ever has been.

But as we stepped into space and the ground fell away beneath us, we lost our most fundamental points of reference. No Earth below. No sky above. No up. No down. Weightless we spin in the dark. There is now only one fixed point on which to stand. Our distances and our weights, our bodies and our souls, are now measured against that most monstrous and grotesque of convulsions, the beginning of space and time.