Above the Earth, Beneath the Stars: The Evolution and Spiritual Value of Ordinary People's Dream of Flight
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: For a long time, "flying to the sky" has been framed by public discourse and institutional narratives as an exclusive domain of aerospace engineering---grand, lofty, and reserved for an elite few. Yet, if we shift our gaze from launch towers to the fabric of everyday life, we discover that the dream of flight is never the privilege of a selected minority. Rather, it is a romantic yearning and spiritual solace rooted in human nature itself, flowing through the ordinary lives of countless individuals. From a child's innocent leap off a doorstep wrapped in a bedsheet, to a teenager's heartbeat while calculating orbital velocity in a physics textbook, to a middle-aged person's momentary escape while gazing out of an airplane window at 10,000 meters---every ordinary person harbors a unique and irreplaceable dream of flight. This dream has little to do with professional research or worldly achievements; it speaks to our innate desire for freedom, our urge to explore the unknown, and our quiet rebellion against the mediocrity of daily routine. Tracing the trajectory of this dream through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and examining its contemporary manifestations in civil aviation, low-altitude tourism, space science popularization, and commercial spaceflight, this paper argues that the dream of flight is not the preserve of elites, but an intrinsic dimension of every ordinary life. The act of looking upward, of striving beyond the given horizon, is a life force as natural and essential as breathing.
Authors: Zhang Zhibo, Liu, Hong-sheng
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7203765722