Whether it's a hole in the ground or the vast swathes of space between celestial bodies, these "empty" spaces are filled with something that has physical properties.
While private companies such as SpaceX have already upended the traditional launch market by offering cheaper prices than longstanding aerospace firms, outer space, including celestial bodies like the moon and Mars, is a different and more difficult matter.
SMASHING space probes into celestial bodies is becoming fashionable.
Inside, interior designer Henk Vos has warmed the cool, celestial space with design classics from Le Corbusier and select contemporary pieces from the likes of Philippe Starck.
He provides vivid detail (the Apollo 8 command module felt like "an outhouse" by the time it splashed down) and contrasts the Apollo period with the shuttle and space-station era that followed (Soviet-American competition in space was a "celestial Olympics," he writes).
Instead of hatching plans to colonize the moon, world leaders came together some months after Gagarin's triumph to agree to a United Nations resolution declaring outer space and all celestial bodies to be "free for exploration and use by all States".
Watching the work of Wayne McGregor, with whom Carter regularly collaborates, it's sometimes impossible to separate the movement from the light: the mysteriously glowing halos that enclosed the dancers in 2012's Carbon Life; or the pixelated colouring in 2013's Atomos that took its cast through smog and fire into suspended celestial space.
Art historian Henri Zerner has called the plan "a grand ritualistic drama which would have filled the rotunda's celestial space".
The solar system consists of two planets (Alinos and Arcterra) and two space stations (the Celestial Archives and the Vesper Defense Outpost).
The main difference in the world view in Newton's Principia was to rid the celestial spaces of vortices carrying the planets.
