The excerpt explains that the apparent reasons for ending lightspeed spaceflight research were practical and strategic: curvature propulsion trails could expose Earth civilization in advance, and visible development of such technology might raise the Solar System’s perceived danger value to outside observers, inviting an earlier dark forest strike.

The account then identifies deeper historical and psychological causes. Humanity once looked to the stars with hope, but the Doomsday Battle, the Battle of Darkness, the judgment of Bronze Age, and the hijacking of Gravity by Blue Space transformed space from a symbol of promise into a source of trauma and philosophical dread.

The general public is described as largely indifferent to lightspeed ships because most people believed they would never personally benefit from them. Ordinary citizens favored the Bunker Project as the most practical path to survival and also found the Black Domain Plan emotionally appealing because it promised a peaceful, sealed-off future within the Solar System, despite the loss of access to the wider universe.

The debate over lightspeed travel belonged mainly to elites. Supporters argued that only expansion into the Milky Way could give humanity true security and saw the Black Domain Plan as civilizational suicide, while opponents feared that space would magnify humanity’s worst tendencies and create scattered totalitarian societies.

The excerpt ends by framing human civilization as a frightened child who briefly opened the door to the cosmos, saw the terrifying endless night outside, and shut the door again.