What types of technology would a sentient species without eyes develop to enable them to explore space?

We are the only sentient civilization currently known to man, and sight is an integral part of both our everyday lives as well as most major technological advances throughout human history. Without the ability to see long distances, we may have never yearned to reach the horizon in ancient history, so there may have been no desire to explore beyond our immediate surroundings. At the very least, the printing press, which really jumped civilization forward a bit through mass production of books and media for spreading knowledge, would have been implemented differently, where instead of adding ink to pages it adds some form of texture (similar to Braille), which seems to me like it would be less effective than print at a massive scale. And finally, computers as we know them are heavily reliant on sight. Most of the way we interact with them is through visual means, either through displays for PCs/tablets/phones, or even with visual indicators such as LEDs on the wide range of other computer-powered devices we interact with each day such as cars, microwaves, etc.

Now, imagine a world where the dominant species is one without sight, as defined as the ability to take electromagnetic radiation and convert it into an image. How could such a species overcome this huge disadvantage to eventually become a space-faring civilization? Some thoughts I've had:

• Echolocation (or something analogous to it) could provide the means to navigate the immediate environment. However, this likely would not allow for "sight" over longer distances.
• Perhaps this echolocation analogue could tell the difference between different textures on an item, and up close was able to provide spatial resolution that approaches that of our eyes.
• There is always a potential for some sort of neural interface, but then you would have to explain how they developed such advanced technology.

Feel free to come up with any (biological, physical, mental, emotional) traits for this race to help explain how they could accomplish this.

posted almost 8 years ago

macraw83‭

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