#arthur c clarke talks about it in his forward of 2010

[cherubchoirs]

if the final war was an eternal ww1, its extremely likely that mankind never achieved any kind of space travel, which honestly is probably a good thing considering the spheres of heaven are also space

RIGHT YEA......i really do like that this puts the alternative timeline important to the narrative into context, and i think this is a good point. especially once you consider hell seems to be a very real, very physical place that humans could get to through mining down into the earth, so it stands to reason the first sphere of heaven is literally just. on the moon (as well as the hint we get from gabriel's campfire scene) however it also makes me wonder about mt purgatory and the corresponding geography in this world as well, since dante placed it in the vast ocean that was believed to occupy the southern hemisphere at the time. BUT it really does make you think....since approaching space exploration in this world would be the equivalent to the tower of babel......hmm