A Letter on Wings Yet Unborn

I write these lines from Paris, where the autumn air still carries the memory of my 14-bis rising above the Bois de Boulogne. The chestnut trees stood as witnesses, and the gentlemen of the Aéro-Club certified what my heart already knew: that man belongs to the sky, and the sky belongs to no one. Now a most extraordinary rumor has reached me — a dispatch, they say, from the year 2026. I confess I cannot vouch for its authenticity, yet neither can I dismiss it, for it speaks of things that stir both my wonder and my unease. It tells of a venture in China — a private enterprise, no less — preparing to send a rocket beyond the very atmosphere of the Earth, into orbital space. They speak of kerosene and liquid oxygen harnessed together, of sums of capital that stagger the imagination, of nations racing not merely across continents but upward, into the void itself. I, who only weeks ago proved that a heavier-than-air machine could sustain itself aloft for a few precious seconds, am asked to contemplate vessels escaping the Earth entirely. The distance between my modest flight and such a feat is almost incomprehensible — and yet, is it not the same impulse? The same restless longing that carried me from the hills of Cabangu, from the coffee groves of my father's fazenda in Minas Gerais, all the way to the workshops of the Seine? But I must speak plainly of what troubles me. If nations race to possess the sky — if governments and their treasuries pour fortunes into machines of ascent — I fear it is not solely for the sake of knowledge or of beauty. I have already heard whispers in the salons of Paris about the military uses of my own invention, and these whispers chill me. The sky was meant to unite us, to render borders absurd, to make every man a citizen of the same boundless territory. Must we carry our wars upward as well? I refuse the notion of frontiers in the heavens. The air above Cabangu is the same air above Peking, above Paris, above every village where a child looks upward and dreams. If the future truly holds such marvels — rockets piercing the orbital sphere — then let them carry not cannons but the shared aspirations of all humanity. The sky is a commons. I shall insist upon this until my last breath.