Sometime around 50 AD "Hero of Alexandria, 20 AD to 62 AD, Who it might be noted was a rather prolific engineer demonstrated a working steam engine. So why would this not have led to the first flight to the moon by 200 AD? The Romans where, themselves, noted builders and engineers one must assume that the potential of such a development would have been obvious to them. Upon reading the designs of Hero on the above webpage it becomes apparent that the focus of his work was the facilitation of theatrics. The wealthy Roman class would have been interested in this as a means of expending thier prodigious wealth in the persute of entertainment. Hence, Hero, a briliant engineer who had a grasp of pneumatics, steam engine design, water pressure and other elements of the beginnings of modern technology was relegated to developing ways of generating "Oo's and Ah's". Sad. The greeks are the fathers of modern atomic theory and mathamatics among other things. By the time of Hero, they had been reduce to the level of scynophants to the Roman empire

So what if Alexander the Great had not died on June 10, 323 BC? What if he had lived another 50 years? The Roman empire would never have arrisen. the scientific thinking of the greeks would have been expressed as a means of solidifing, growing and improving the Greek empire. Perhaps Hero would have been born and grown up to be a great engineer and we would have made it to the moon by 100 AD. We didn't. Why? Whats the connection to the nature of time and consciousness?