The article is devoted to the influence of philosophical and theoretical ideas of the scientific direction of Russian cosmism on their transformation into a scientific and practical plane – the creation of the rocket and space industry, the launch of satellites, rockets, and humans into space. The relevance of the problem considered in the article lies in the fact that space, while remaining the sphere of interests of the leading world powers competing with each other in political, economic, cultural, and military terms, remains a platform for international cooperation, on which factors of national and global security largely depend. In this work, space exploration is considered in the development from philosophical and scientific research of the late 19th – early 20th century to projects of private corporations investing in the exploration of the Moon, colonization of Mars, development of a fleet of interstellar ships for travel to the Alpha Centauri system in our days. Scientific novelty is determined by a comprehensive consideration of the dialectics of the intellectual, creative and pragmatic in matters of space exploration. In a short period of time, under the influence of the philosophical ideas of the scientific direction of cosmism, and their logical continuation in the form of the development of the theory of cosmonautics and rocket science, there was the emergence of a new stratum of society – scientific and technical elite, which brought the country to a new level of technical development, which allows it to remain the world's leading space power to this day.