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The following are some famous environmental quotes centered on the theme of Outer Space as well as Visions of Space Exploration and Colonization. If you would like to go to the online environmental forum Click Here.
“I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.”
- Stephen Hawking
“The possible advantages of [space colonization] are many and not to be taken lightly. In theory many of humanity's most environmentally destructive activities could be removed from the biosphere entirely. The population density of the Earth could be reduced, and a high quality of life could be provided to all Homo sapiens. It might even make war obsolete... Environmentalists often accuse politicians of taking too short-term a view of the human predicament. By prematurely rejecting the idea of space colonies they would be making the same mistake.”
- Paul Ehrlich
“People who view industrialization as a source of the Earth's troubles, its pollution, and the desecration of its surface, can only advocate that we give it up. This is something that we can't do; we have the tiger by the tail. We have 4.5 billion people on Earth. We can't support that many unless we're industrialized and technologically advanced. So, the idea is not to get rid of industrialization but to move it somewhere else. If we can move it a few thousand miles into space, we still have it, but not on Earth. Earth can then become a world of parks, farms, and wilderness without giving up the benefits of industrialization.”
- Isaac Asimov
“The time has come to look beyond brief encounters. We must commit ourselves anew to a sustained program of manned exploration of the solar system and, yes, the permanent settlement of space.”
- George H.W. Bush
“There is no hope for the fanciful idea of reaching the Moon because of insurmountable barriers to escaping the earth's gravity.”
- Dr. F. R. Moulton
“God is infinite, so His universe must be too. Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of His kingdom made manifest; He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.”
- Giordana Bruno
“This has been far more than three men on a mission to the Moon; more still than the efforts of a government and industry team; more, even, than the efforts of one nation. We feel this stands as a symbol of the insatiable curiosity of all mankind to explore the unknown.”
- Edwin Aldrin, Jr.
“If I could get one message to you it would be this: the future of this country and the welfare of the free world depends upon our success in space. There is no room in this country for any but a fully cooperative, urgently motivated all-out effort toward space leadership. No one person, no one company, no one government agency, has a monopoly on the competence, the missions, or the requirements for the space program.”
- Lyndon B. Johnson
“There is nothing so far removed from us to be beyond our reach, or so far hidden that we cannot discover it.”
- Rene Descartes
“Astronauts will remain the explorers, the pioneers—the first to go back to moon and on to Mars. But I think it's really important to make space space available to as many people as we can. It's going to be a while before we can launch people for less than $20 million a ticket. But that day is coming.”
- Sally Ride
“Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth... Will this happen before our technological civilization disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it forever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos, not just for our Earth.”
- Martin Rees
“Those who study the stars have God for a teacher.”
- Tycho Brahe
“Market studies suggest space tourism—a rubbernecker's trip to earth orbit—is likely to draw 50,000 passengers a year if the ticket can be pushed below $25,000. That's what tens of thousands of people spend each year on competing trips, such as round-the-world cruises on luxury liners and adventure tours to Antarctica or Mount Everest.”
- G. Harry Stine
“It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species. Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers we have not yet thought of.”
- Stephen Hawking
“Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit.”
- Frank Borman
“We're looking for things that contain water or carbon dioxide, hydrates or carbonates - those things that form in standing water. There's no standing water on Mars today - the temperatures and pressures are too low. Water on Mars behaves like carbon dioxide does on Earth. It goes from a solid to a gas and back again. But if we find evidence that these minerals are there, there must have been a pond.”
- Dr. Richard Zurek
“For when I look at the Moon I do not see a hostile, empty world. I see the radiant body where man has taken his first steps into a frontier that will never end.”
- David R. Scott
“Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving.”
- Gene Roddenberry
“Development of the space station is as inevitable as the rising of the sun; man has already poked his nose into space and he is not likely to pull it back . . . . There can be no thought of finishing, for aiming at the stars—both literally and figuratively—is the work of generations, and no matter how much progress one makes, there is always the thrill of just beginning.”
- Wernher von Braun
“Now is the time...for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.”
- John F. Kennedy
“The Moon is not a destination; it's a direction.”
- Mike Collins
“Even present-day fuels possess more than enough energy, if only we knew how to release and use it. Just as molecular energy is so freely used today, so atomic energy may bring interplantary travel within easy reach tomorrow.”
- P. E. Cleator
“By the year 2000 we will undoubtedly have a sizable operation on the Moon, we will have achieved a manned Mars landing and it's entirely possible we will have flown with men to the outer planets.”
- Dr. Wernher von Braun
“We have already begun to fly; several persons, here and there, have found the secret to fitting wings to themselves, of setting them in motion, so that they are held up in the air and are carried across streams . . . the art of flying is only just being born; it will be perfected, and some day we will go as far as the Moon.”
- Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
“To set foot on the soil of the asteroids, to lift by hand a rock from the Moon, to observe Mars from a distance of several tens of kilometers, to land on its satellite or even on its surface, what can be more fantastic? From the moment of using rocket devices a new great era will begin in astronomy: the epoch of the more intensive study of the firmament.”
- Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
“Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
- Neil Armstrong
“Here Men From Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon The Moon July 1969 A.D. We Came In Peace For All Mankind.”
- Famous plaque left on the Moon
“Apollo's success was made possible by the drive and daring of an entire nation committed to a dream.”
- George H.W. Bush
“I only hope that we shall not wait to adopt the program until after our astronomers have reported a new and unsuspected aster[oid] moving across their fields of vision with menacing speed. At that point it will be too late!”
- Wernher von Braun
“But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?”
- John F. Kennedy
“You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
- Rabindranath Tagore
“Men who have worked together to reach the stars are not likely to descend together into the depths of war and desolation.”
- Lyndon B. Johnson
“Knowing what we know now, we are being irresponsible in our failure to make the scientific and technical progress we will need for protecting our newly discovered severely threatened and probably endangered species--us. NASA is not about the 'Adventure of Human Space Exploration,' we are in the deadly serious business of saving the species. All Human Exploration's bottom line is about preserving our species over the long haul.”
- John Young
“Neil and Buzz, I am talking to you by telephone from the Oval Office at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. . . . Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. As you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth.”
- Richard M. Nixon
“Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight up.”
- Fred Hoyle
“Space is to place as eternity is to time.”
- Joseph Joubert
“The world itself looks cleaner and so much more beautiful. Maybe we can make it that way—the way God intended it to be—by giving everybody that new perspective from out in space.”
- Roger B. Chaffee
“No rocket will reach the moon save by a miraculous discovery of an explosive far more energetic than any known. And even if the requisite fuel were produced, it would still have to be shown that the rocket machine would operate at 459 degrees below zero—the temperature of interplanetary space.”
- Nikola Tesla
“Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century, and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.”
- New York Times
“We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.”
- John F. Kennedy
“The Moon is the first milestone on the road to the stars.”
- Arthur C. Clarke
“The extension of life beyond Earth is the most important thing we can do as a species.”
- Elon Musk
“It must be states that there is not the slightest possibility of such a journey. There is not in sight any source of energy that would be a fair start toward that which would be necessary to get us beyond the gravitative control of the earth. There is no theory that would guide us through interplantary space to another world even if we could control our departure from the earth; there is no means of carrying the large amount oxygen, water, and food that would be necessary for such a long journey; and there is not known way of easing our ether ship down on the surface of another world, if we could get there.”
- F. R. Moulton
“There may be only a brief window of opportunity for space travel during which we will in principle have the capability to establish colonies (which could in turn establish further colonies). If we let that opportunity pass without taking advantage of it we will be doomed to remain on the Earth where we will eventually go extinct.”
- Richard Gott
“The ability to carry out scientific observations at a distance is developing so rapidly that I don't see any unique role for man in planetary exploration.”
- Gordon MacDonald
“Yes, I did feel a special responsibility to be the first American woman in space.”
- Sally Ride
“If the resources here on Earth are limited, they are not limited in the universe. We are not constrained by the limitations of our planet.... As children have to leave the security of family and home life to insure growth into mature adults, so also must humankind leave the security and familiarity of Earth to reach maturity and obtain the highest attainment possible for the human race.”
- Nichelle Nichols
“Every civilization [in the universe] must go through this [a nuclear crisis]. Those that don't make it destroy themselves. Those that do make it end up cavorting all over the universe.”
- Ted Taylor
“Mankind will not remain on Earth forever, but in its quest for light and space will at first timidly penetrate beyond the confines of the atmosphere, and later will conquer for itself all the space near the Sun.”
- Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
“Flight out of the atmosphere is a simple thing to do and should have been available to the public twenty years ago. Ten years from now, we will have space tourism where you will be able to see the black sky and the curvature of the earth. It will be the most exciting roller coaster ride you can buy.”
- Burt Rutan
“In time, [a Martian] colony would grow to the point of being self- sustaining. When this stage was reached, humanity would have a precious insurance policy against catastrophe at home. During the next millennium there is a significant chance that civilization on Earth will be destroyed by an asteroid, a killer plague or a global war. A Martian colony could keep the flame of civilization and culture alive until Earth could be reverse- colonized from Mars.”
- Paul Davies
“The space station is a first and necessary step for sustained manned exploration, one that we're pleased has been endorsed by Senator Glenn, and Neil Armstrong, and so many of the veteran astronauts we honor today. But it's only a first step.”
- George H.W. Bush
“Science has reached such a stage that the creation of an artificial satellite of the Earth is a real possibility.”
- A. N. Nesmeyanov
“Many, and some of the most pressing, of our terrestrial problems can be solved only by going into space. Long before it was a vanishing commodity, the wilderness as the preservation of the world was proclaimed by Thoreau. In the new wilderness of the Solar System may lie the future preservation of mankind.”
- Arthur C. Clarke
“Don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go--and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.”
- Wernher von Braun
“My preference would be to cancel the Space Station, to move on, not to let our dreams be suspended 100 miles above Earth in technology that was designed 15 years ago. Let us dream about Mars. Let us dream about going back to the Moon. Let us dream big dreams like we are capable of, NASA.”
- Tim Roemer
“In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the Moon. If we make this judgement affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.”
- John F. Kennedy
“It's too bad, but the way American people are, now that they have all this capability, instead of taking advantage of it, they'll probably just piss it all away.”
- Lyndon B. Johnson
“A day will come when beings, now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon Earth as a footstool and laugh, and reach out their hands amidst the stars.”
- H. G. Wells
“I believe it is urgent to begin now, before we are constrained by a totally controlled society monitoring limited resources on the planet. Now is the time to establish our extraterrestrial base in freedom; later it may be under the coercion of necessity.”
- Barbara Marx
“The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet. Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe. There isn't anywhere like the Earth in the solar system, so we would have to go to another star. If we used chemical fuel rockets like the Apollo mission to the moon, the journey to the nearest star would take 50,000 years. This is obviously far too long to be practical, so science fiction has developed the idea of warp drive, which takes you instantly to your destination. Unfortunately, this would violate the scientific law which says that nothing can travel faster than light. However, we can still within the law, by using matter/antimatter annihilation, at least reach just below the speed of light. With that, it would be possible to reach the next star in about six years, though it wouldn't seem so long for those on board.”
- Stephen Hawking
“Suddenly, from behind the rim of the Moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth . . . home.”
- Edgar Mitchell
“We had a challenge. We set a goal. And we achieved it.”
- George H.W. Bush
“The time will come when man will know even what is going on in the other planets and perhaps be able to visit them.”
- Henry Ford
“In the wide and starry band of near-earth space, beginning about 200 miles up and extending to 22,300 miles, where a satellite can be placed in stationary orbit rotating in unison with the earth. There is the possibility of an industrial bonanza. Operating in this pure and virtually gravity-free environment, factories could produce novel materials worth as much as $30,000 a pound back here on earth. No corporation affected by changes in technology can afford to ignore the new era of innovation that is about to begin.”
- Gene Bylinsky
“It would be the height of presumption to think we are the only living things in this enormous immensity.”
- Wernher von Braun
“A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.”
- Christopher Wren
“On earth, even if we should use all the solar energy which we receive, we should still be wasting all but one two-billionths of the energy the sun gives out. Consequently, when we have learnt to live on this solar energy and also to emancipate ourselves from the earth's surface, the possibilities of the spread of humanity will be multiplied accordingly... There will, from desire or necessity, come the idea of building a permanent home for men in space... At first space navigators, and then scientists whose observations would be best conducted outside the earth, and then finally those who for any reason were dissatisfied with earthly conditions would come to inhabit these bases and found permanent spatial colonies.”
- J. D. Bernal
“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”
- Neil Armstrong
“To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow.”
- Metrodorus of Chios
“It's human nature to stretch, to go, to see, to understand. Exploration is not a choice, really; it's an imperative.”
- Michael Collins
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
- John F. Kennedy
“I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.”
- Neil Armstrong
“Our descendants will certainly attempt journeys to other members of the solar system. . . . By 2030 the first preparations for the first attempt to reach Mars may perhaps be under consideration. The hardy individuals who form the personnel of the expedition will be sent forth in a machine propelled like a rocket.”
- Lord Birkenhead
“Space travel has given us a new appreciation for the Earth. We realize that the Earth is special. We've seen it from afar. We realize that the Earth is the only natural home for man we know of, and that we had better protect it.”
- James Erwin
“Looking outward to the blackness of space, sprinkled with the glory of a universe of lights, I saw majesty—but no welcome. Below was a welcoming planet. There, contained in the thin, moving, incredibly fragile shell of the biosphere is everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and comedy. That's where life is; that's were all the good stuff is.”
- Loren Acton
“As we got further and further away, it [the Earth] diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man.”
- James B. Irwin
“The space effort is very simply a continuation of the expansion of ecological range, which has been occurring at an accelerating rate throughout the evolutionary history of Man... Successful extraterrestrial colonization, for example, might be counted as an evolutionary "success," and unsuccessful colonization--abandonment of the space effort--as an evolutionary "failure." ... Space exploration should be considered primarily as a biological thrust outward for the human species, and not just another step toward making life easier through a speedup in technology.”
- Ward J. Haas
“This generation is crucial; we have the resources to get mankind off this planet. If we don't do it, we may soon be facing a world of 15 billion people and more, a world in which it's all we can do to stay alive; a world without the resources to go into space and get rich... I don't think it will come to that because the vision of the future is so clear to me. We need realize only one thing: we do not inhabit 'Only One Earth.' Mankind doesn't live on Earth. Man lives in a solar system... Given a basic space civilization ... we'll have accomplished one goal: no single accident, no war, no one insane action will finish us off.”
- Jerry Pournelle
“Long-term, I see robotics prevailing on the moon. The most important decision we'll have to make about space travel is whether to commit to a permanent human presence on Mars. Without it, we'll never be a true space-faring people.”
- Edwin Aldrin, Jr.
“Why our space program? Why, indeed, did we trouble to look past the next mountain? Our prime obligation to ourselves is to make the unknown known. We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are.”
- Gene Roddenberry
“Space is as infinite as we can imagine, and expanding this perspective is what adjusts humankind’s focus on conquering our true enemies, the formidable foes: ignorance and limitation.”
- Vanna Bonta
“If [the earth] goes, we go. And so we should go elsewhere, so that when the earth goes, we have another place to go. And while we're at it, we should take our pets and plants, too. We wouldn't want to be without them, just as they wouldn't want to be without us--even if they don't know it. It's our job to know things, and to act accordingly. And if we fail at that mission, then we really will have failed in upholding our end of the Burkean bargain--that is, partnering not only with the living and the dead, but with those who are yet to be born.”
- James Pinkerton
“The acceleration which must result from the use of rockets inevitably would damage the brain beyond repair. The exact rate of acceleration in feet per second that the human brain can survive is not known. It is almost certainly not enough, however, to render flight by rockets possible.”
- John P. Lockhard-Mummery
“The urge to explore has propelled evolution since the first water creatures reconnoitered the land. Like all living systems, cultures cannot remain static; they evolve or decline. They explore or expire... Beyond all rationales, space flight is a spiritual quest in the broadest sense, one promising a revitalization of humanity and a rebirth of hope no less profound than the great opening out of mind and spirit at the dawn of our modern age.”
- Buzz Aldrin
“Earth is our cradle, not our final destiny.”
- Edgar Mitchell
“There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.”
- T. Craven
“We will travel to neighboring stars, to new worlds, to discover the unknown. And it will not happen in my lifetime, and probably not during the lives of my children, but a dream to be realized by future generations must begin with this generation. We cannot take the next giant leap for mankind tomorrow unless we take a single step today.”
- George H.W. Bush
“The astronauts who lost their lives on Challenger, as well as the other eight astronauts who were killed in the line of duty and the four Soviet cosmonauts who died in space serve as inspiration for us all. None of them would have wanted to give her or his life in vain. None would have wanted us to stop striving for the stars. If anything, we must continue to preserve their dreams.”
- Doug Fulmer
“I've often wondered, what if all of us in the world discovered that we were threatened by a greater power from outer space and from another planet? Wouldn't we all of a sudden find that we didn't have any differences between us at all?”
- Ronald Reagan
“The stars don't look bigger, but they do look brighter.”
- Sally Ride
“For me, a rocket is only a means--only a method of reaching the depths of space--and not an end in itself... There's no doubt that it's very important to have rocket ships since they will help mankind to settle elsewhere in the universe. But what I'm working for is this resettling... The whole idea is to move away from the Earth to settlements in space.”
- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
“If there is a possibility of cosmonautics, Man will not hesitate to leave the Earth to launch himself into interplanetary space at the risk of loosing his own life.”
- G. A. Crocco
“As long as there is the safety valve of unexplored frontiers, the aggressive and exploitive urges of human beings can be channeled into long-term possibilities and benefits. But as those frontiers close down, and people begin to turn in upon themselves, that jeopardizes the democratic fabric itself. I don't happen to think the frontier is closed. It's just opening up in space... The human race is going out and throughout, wherever space will permit us to go. It's only a question of when, and who, and what kind of leadership will take us there. And I, for one, don't think we ought to be looking just down here below.”
- Jerry Brown
“Clearly our first task is to use the material wealth of space to solve the urgent problems we now face on Earth: to bring the poverty-stricken segments of the world up to a decent living standard, without recourse to war or punitive action against those already in material comfort; to provide for a maturing civilization the basic energy vital to its survival.”
- Gerard O'Neill
“In my own view, the important achievement of Apollo was a demonstration that humanity is not forever chained to this planet, and our visions go rather further than that, and our opportunities are unlimited.”
- Neil Armstrong
“The point to remember is that a giant leap into space can be a giant leap toward peace down below.”
- Willy Ley
“I suppose we shall soon travel by air-vessels; make air instead of sea voyages; and at length find our way to the Moon, in spite of the want of atmosphere.”
- Lord Byron
“Space is almost infinite. As a matter of fact, we think it is infinite.”
- Dan Quayle
“It's a strange, eerie sensation to fly a lunar landing trajectory - not difficult, but somewhat complex and unforgiving.”
- Neil Armstrong
“Remember this: once the human race is established on more than one planet and especially, in more than one solar system, there is no way now imaginable to kill off the human race.”
- Robert Heinlein
“The greatest gain from space travel consists in the extension of our knowledge. In a hundred years this newly won knowledge will pay huge and unexpected dividends.”
- Wernher von Braun
“The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.”
- Robert Heinlein
“To our knowledge, life exists on only one planet, Earth. If something bad happens, it's gone. I think we should establish life on another planet—Mars in particular—but we 're not making very good progress. SpaceX is intended to make that happen.”
- Elon Musk
“I would not see our candle blown out in the wind. It is a small thing, this dear gift of life handed us mysteriously out of immensity. I would not have that gift expire... If I seem to be beating a dead horse again and again, I must protest: No! I am beating, again and again, living man to keep him awake and move his limbs and jump his mind... What's the use of looking at Mars through a telescope, sitting on panels, writing books, if it isn't to guarantee, not just the survival of mankind, but mankind surviving forever!”
- Ray Bradbury
“The first men who set out for Mars had better make sure they leave everything at home in apple-pie order. They won't get back to earth for more than two and a half years. The difficulties of a trip to mars are formidable. What curious information will these first explorers carry back from Mars? Nobody knows, and its extremely doubtful that anyone now living will ever know. All that can be said with certainty today is this: the trip will be made, and will be made someday.”
- Wernher von Braun
“However, the purpose of the present considerations is not an attempt to convince anyone that we will be able tomorrow to travel to other celestial bodies. It is only an attempt to show that traveling into outer space should no longer be viewed as something impossible for humans but presents a problem that really can be solved by technical work. The overwhelming greatness of the goal should make all the roadblocks still standing in its way appear insignificant.”
- Hermann Noordung
“The question to ask is whether the risk of traveling to space is worth the benefit. The answer is an unequivocal yes, but not only for the reasons that are usually touted by the space community: the need to explore, the scientific return, and the possibility of commercial profit. The most compelling reason, a very long-term one, is the necessity of using space to protect Earth and guarantee the survival of humanity.”
- William E. Burrows
“The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!”
- Larry Niven
“There are three reasons why, quite apart from scientific considerations, mankind needs to travel in space. The first reason is garbage disposal; we need to transfer industrial processes into space so that the earth may remain a green and pleasant place for our grandchildren to live in. The second reason is to escape material impoverishment: the resources of this planet are finite, and we shall not forego forever the abundance of solar energy and minerals and living space that are spread out all around us. The third reason is our spiritual need for an open frontier.”
- Freeman Dyson
“It's like trying to describe what you feel when you're standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon or remembering your first love or the birth of your child. You have to be there to really know what it's like.”
- Harrison Schmitt
“We will return to the Moon no later than 2020 and extend human presence across the Solar System and beyond.”
- Dr. Michael Griffin
“I don't know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.”
- John Glenn
“The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space] presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished. An analogy such as this may be misleading, and we believe it to be so in this case.”
- Richard van der Riet Wooley
“The colors are stunning. In a single view, I see - looking out at the edge of the earth: red at the horizon line, blending to orange and yellow, followed by a thin white line, then light blue, gradually turning to dark blue and various gradually darker shades of gray, then black and a million stars above. It’s breathtaking.”
- Willie McCool
“The shuttle tomorrow is truly like laying the last spike on the transcontinental railroad, only much more so. And whether or not we're going to see in in the next 10 or 20 years, there are people alive today who will see manufacturing in space from moon materials or from asteroids.”
- Jerry Brown
“When we describe the Moon as dead, we are describing the deadness in ourselves. When we find space so hideously void, we are describing our own unbearable emptiness.”
- D.H. Lawrence
“We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens ... The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.”
- Johannes Kepler
“We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the earth.”
- William Anders
“We must turn our guns away from each other and outwards, to defend the Earth, creating a global and in space network of sensors and telescopes to find asteroids that could destroy our planet and create the systems to stop them. It makes no sense to dream great dreams while waiting to be hit by a train.”
- Aldrin and Rick Tumlinson
“The most important fact of this century is not that Earth is threatened in many ways, It is that for the first time in all of its history a decisive means of protecting the home planet exists. It is by using space.”
- William E. Burrows
“We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see hurricanes form.”
- Sally Ride
“Many people are shrinking from the future and from participation in the movement toward a new, expanded reality. And, like homesick travelers abroad, they are focusing their anxieties on home. The reasons are not far to seek. We are at a turning point in human history. We could turn our attention to the problems that going to the Moon certainly will not solve. But I think this would be fatal to our future. A society that no longer moves forward does not merely stagnate; it begins to die.”
- Margaret Mead
“Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft - and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.”
- Wernher von Braun
“Our goal: To place Americans on Mars and to do it within the working lifetimes of scientists and engineers who will be recruited for the effort today. And just as Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to open the continent, our commitment to the Moon/Mars initiative will open the Universe. It's the opportunity of a lifetime, and offers a lifetime of opportunity.”
- George H.W. Bush
“And as we know now, and as I pointed out many times, the great plume of fire at the bottom of the Space Shuttle is actually dollar bills burning, and the most efficient method of destroying American dollar bills as has ever been devised by man.”
- Dana Rohrabacher
“If the human species, or indeed any part of the biosphere, is to continue to survive, it must eventually leave the Earth and colonize space. For the simple fact of the matter is, the planet Earth is doomed... Let us follow many environmentalists and regard the Earth as Gaia, the mother of all life (which indeed she is). Gaia, like all mothers, is not immortal. She is going to die. But her line of descent might be immortal... Gaia's children might never die out--provided they move into space. The Earth should be regarded as the womb of life--but one cannot remain in the womb forever.”
- Frank Tipler
“If Earth is considered a closed system, there will be less for all forever. The frontier is closed, the wilderness is gone, nature is being destroyed by human consumers, while billions are starving. The future indeed looks grim, and there are, ultimately, no really long-range, positive solutions, nor motivation for making the sacrifices and doing the hard work needed now, unless we understand that we are evolving from an Earth-only toward an Earth-space or universal species.”
- Barbara Marx Hubbard
“Satellite vehicles represent a rather fearsome foresight of future wars of nerves, in which aggressive nations could put their pilotless missiles into frictionless satellite motion round the earth for all to see and fear, with the constant threat of guiding them down to a target.”
- W. F. Hilton
“There's no reason why, in the next century, it should cost more to go to the Moon than it costs to fly around the world today.”
- Arthur C. Clarke
“We have the machines, the people and the know-how to make this journey, to establish a permanent lunar base, and to reach out to Mars.”
- Rod Pyle
“All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.”
- Carl Sagan
“The United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward, and so will space.”
- John F. Kennedy
“Three days and three nights they journeyed. It was a perilous, unprecedented, breathtaking voyage.”
- George H.W. Bush
“The Moon is ripe for commercial development. It's a lot closer than you think, at least in travel time, which is four days. People will soon get to experience the Moon in ways they never imagined.”
- Dennis Laurie
“Many of the problems that we have today may not have solutions on Earth. The solutions may lie only in leaving the planet behind. There's no way we can avoid tearing up the countryside for ores, for fuel, for raw materials here on Earth--short of everybody dying off.”
- Keith and Carolyn Henson
“For my own part, I declare I know nothing whatever about it, but looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?”
- Vincent van Gogh
“Space flights are merely an escape, a fleeing away from oneself, because it is easier to go to Mars or to the moon than it is to penetrate one's own being.”
- Carl Gustav Jung
“Any hostility that some environmentalists have shown toward space projects arises from the intense sense of responsibility to focus on the needs of the planet. They have not come to appreciate--and hardly anyone has--that the long-term health of this world requires that we also develop the capacity to leave it in large numbers. So this is our dual responsibility to the planet that gave us our existence: to protect her and to spread her seeds. It's actually very simple and obvious if you think about it. Both activities are equally essential to maintain the balance of life. Now that we are mature, we must begin to take these responsibilities very seriously.”
- Steven Wolfe
“I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.”
- Neil Armstrong
“This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd length to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists working in thought-tight compartments. Let us critically examine the proposal, For a projectile entirely to escape the gravitation of earth, it needs a velocity of 7 miles a second. The thermal energy of a gramme at this speed is 15,180 calories. . . . The energy of our most violent explosive—nitroglycerine—is less than 1,500 calories per gramme. Consequently, even had the explosive nothing to carry, it has only one-tenth of the energy necessary to escape the earth. . . . hence the proposition appears to be basically impossible.”
- A. W. Bickerton
“The United States this week will commit its national pride, eight years of work and $24 billion of its fortune to showing the world it can still fulfill a dream. It will send three young men on a human adventure of mythological proportions with the whole of the civilized world invited to watch - for better or worse.”
- Rudy Abramson
“Many say exploration is part of our destiny, but it's actually our duty to future generations and their quest to ensure the survival of the human species.”
- Edwin Aldrin, Jr.
“And then, the Earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet and sun from sun. The Earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the Universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds.”
- Winwood Reade
“I must confess to a feeling of profound humility in the presence of a universe which transcends us at almost every point. I feel like a child who while playing by the seashores has found a few bright colored shells and few pebbles while the whole vast ocean of truth stretches out almost untouched and unruffled before my eager fingers.”
- Isaac Newton
“The earth is the cradle of humankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.”
- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
“We have taken to the Moon the wealth of this nation, the vision of its political leaders, the intelligence of its scientists, the dedication of its engineers, the careful craftsmanship of its workers, and the enthusiastic support of its people. We have brought back rocks, and I think it is a fair trade. Man has always gone where he has been able to go. It's that simple. He will continue pushing back his frontier, no matter how far it may carry him from his homeland.”
- Michael Collins
“No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe.”
- Henry Miller
“What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that man set foot on the Moon but that they set eye on the earth.”
- Norman Cousins
“If we were to start today on an organized and well-supported space program I believe a practical passenger rocket can be built and tested within ten years.”
- Dr. Wernher von Braun
“Life, for ever dying to be born afresh, for ever young and eager, will presently stand upon this earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars.”
- H. G. Wells
“Colonization means potential immortality for the human genus. Man's safety on Earth was never great, and it dwindles hourly. Disarmament, even world government, will not guarantee survival in an age when population presses natural resources to the limit and when the knowledge of how to work mischief on a planetary scale is ever more widely diffused among peoples who may grow ever more desperate.”
- Poul Anderson
“Space is for everybody. It's not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That's our new frontier out there, and it's everybody's business to know about space.”
- Christa McAuliffe
“This is the goal: To make available for life every place where life is possible. To make inhabitable all worlds as yet uninhabitable, and all life purposeful.”
- Hermann Oberth
“The creative conquest of space will serve as a wonderful substitute for war.”
- James S. McDonnell
“I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul. We're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.”
- Neil Armstrong
“We hesitate about where to go from here in space. Yet our delay in exploiting this window of opportunity could close off choices for our descendants if the no-growth paradigm--or a failure of nerve--should come to dominate the industrial nations... Because of our technologies, and the scales of our political and economic organizations, we now have the option of taking a conscious evolutionary step, expanding the presence and influence of humanity beyond the biosphere that evolved us--and possibly beyond the limits that otherwise would constrain our future... Our generation is the first to have this choice. It may be up to us to prove that intelligence armed with technology has long-term survival value.”
- Michael Michaud
“As I looked down, I saw a large river meandering slowly along for miles, passing from one country to another without stopping. I also saw huge forests, extending along several borders. And I watched the extent of one ocean touch the shores of separate continents. Two words leaped to mind as I looked down on all this: commonality and interdependence. We are one world.”
- John-David Bartoe
“It is complete nonsense to believe flying machines will ever work.”
- Stanley Mosley
“Space travel leading to skylife is vital to human survival, because the question is not whether we will be hit by an asteroid, but when. A planetary culture that does not develop spacefaring is courting suicide. All our history, all our social progress and growing insight will be for nothing if we perish. No risk of this kind, however small it might be argued to be, is worth taking, and no cost to prevent it is too great. No level of risk is acceptable when it comes to all or nothing survival.”
- Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski
“The lander lifetime is really set by the seasons. There comes a time when it s total darkness. For a solar-powered lander, that is not good. Even before that time, it is going to get much colder. That is probably what will end the life of the mission. However, we expect first to see water ice frost because that will freeze out at higher temperatures. If the lander lasts long enough, we may see the first return of the seasonal carbon dioxide frost.”
- Dr. Richard Zurek
“Why the Moon? Why Mars? Because it is humanity's destiny to strive, to seek, to find. And because it is America's destiny to lead.”
- George H.W. Bush
“The next 15 years will see thousands of people leave the atmosphere on suborbital flights. My company's SS2 system might fly 100,000 people by 2024. If it is shown to be highly profitable, perhaps we will see 20,000 people traveling to orbit by 2035, and then thousands to the moon by 2050. If we make a courageous decision, like the program we kicked off for Apollo, we will see our grandchildren in outposts on other planets.”
- Burt Rutan
“Since the beginning of time, mankind has considered it as an expression of its Earthly weakness and inadequacy to be bound to the Earth, to be unable to free itself from the mysterious shackles of gravity. Not without good reason then has the concept of the transcendental always been associated with the idea of weightlessness, the power 'to be able freely to rise into the sky.' And most people even today still take it as a dogma that it is indeed unthinkable for Earthly beings ever to be able to escape the Earth. Is this point of view really justified?”
- Hermann Noordung
“For me the single overarching goal of human space flight is the human settlement of the solar system, and eventually beyond. I can think of no lesser purpose sufficient to justify the difficulty of the enterprise, and no greater purpose is possible.”
- Mike Griffin
“To fulfill our cosmic destiny and carry Life to the stars, we must act quickly. The same unleashed powers that enable us to enliven the universe are now, ironically, causing us to destroy the Earth. The longer we delay, the further we may slip into a pit of our own digging. If we wait too long, we will be swept into a world so poisoned by pollution, so overrun by masses of starving people, so stripped of surplus resources, that there will be no chance to ever leave this planet.”
- Marshall Savage
“We went to the Moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.”
- Edgar Mitchell
“Until now in world's history, whenever we've had a dark age, it's been temporary and local. And other parts of the world have been doing fine. And eventually, they help you get out of the dark age. We are now facing a possible dark age which is going to be world-wide and permanent! That's not fun. That's a different thing. But once we have established many worlds, we can do whatever we want as long as we do it one world at a time.”
- Isaac Asimov
“The view of the Earth from the Moon fascinated me—a small disk, 240,000 miles away. Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, pestilence don't show from that distance.”
- Frank Borman
“In all the history of mankind there will be only one generation which will be the first to explore the solar system, one generation for which, in childhood the planets are distant and indistinct discs moving through the night, and for which in old age the planets are places, diverse new worlds in the course of exploration. There will be a time in our future history when the solar system will be explored and inhabited by men who will be looking outward toward the first trip to the stars. To them and to all who come after us, the present moment will be a pivotal instant in the history of mankind.”
- Carl Sagan
“That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.”
- Neil A. Armstrong
“In the long run, the only solution I see to the problem of diversity is the expansion of mankind into the universe by means of green technology... Green technology means we do not live in cans but adapt our plants and our animals and ourselves to live wild in the universe as we find it... When life invades a new habitat, she never moves with a single species. She comes with a variety of species, and as soon as she is established, her species spread and diversify further. Our spread through the galaxy will follow her ancient pattern.”
- Freeman Dyson
“Earth has provided a stable platform for the evolution of life over 4 billion years. But that lease is limited; we know for sure that it will expire after a few billion more. Long before that, our planet may become a place where it is no longer suitable for us to live. Increasing luminosity of the sun may gradually boil our oceans, or more sudden catastrophes may threaten our existence. If we are wise, we will have furnished our new apartments long before that time.”
- Robert Shapiro
“In the long run, a single-planet species will not survive. One day, I don't know when, but one day, there will be more humans living off the Earth than on it.”
- Mike Griffin
“Our generation may stand at a crucial breakpoint in history, for we in the presently affluent nations may be the last who can afford to open up the high frontier. What we do during the next ten or twenty years may determine whether future generations will live in a humane and rewarding society, or whether they will spend their lives in desperate contention for the dwindling sustenance afforded by our limited terrestrial resources.”
- Philip Chapman
“It is known that there are an infinte number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely products of a deranged imagination.”
- Douglas Adams
“There is no way back into the past; the choice, as Wells once said, is the universe--or nothing. Though men and civilizations may yearn for rest, for the dream of the lotus-eaters, that is a desire that merges imperceptibly into death. The challenge of the great spaces between the worlds is a stupendous one; but if we fail to meet it, the story of our race will be drawing to its close.”
- Arthur C. Clarke
“Six years ago, Pioneer 10 sailed beyond the orbits of Neptune and of Pluto. The first manmade object to leave the solar system, its destination unknown. It's now journeyed through the tenures of five Presidents. 4 billion miles from Earth.”
- George H.W. Bush
“The sun, the Moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago ... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.”
- Havelock Ellis
“If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”
- Virgil I. Grissom
“This blowing dust became increasingly thicker. It was very much like landing in a fast-moving ground fog.”
- Neil Armstrong
“We are at a point in history where a proper attention to space, and especially near space, may be absolutely crucial in bringing the world together.”
- Margaret Mead
“Nothing will stop us. The road to the stars is steep and dangerous. But we're not afraid. Space flights can't be stopped. This isn't the work of one man or even a group of men. It is a historical process which mankind is carrying out in accordance with the natural laws of human development.”
- Yuri Gagarin
“Man must at all costs overcome the Earth's gravity and have, in reserve, the space at least of the Solar System. All kinds of danger wait for him on the Earth... We are talking of disaster that can destroy the whole of mankind or a large part of it... For instance, a cloud of bolides [meteors] or a small planet a few dozen kilometers in diameter could fall on the Earth, with such an impact that the solid, liquid or gaseous blast produced by it could wipe off the face of the Earth all traces of man and his buildings. The rise of temperature accompanying it could alone scorch or kill all living beings... We are further compelled to take up the struggle against gravity, and for the utilisation of celestial space and all its wealth, because of the overpopulation of our planet. Numerous other terrible dangers await mankind on the Earth, all of which suggest that man should look for a way into the Cosmos.”
- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
“TransHab technology could possibly mean a manned-exploration of Mars which could result in a wealth of scientific information previously unavailable.”
- Michael Castle
“From now on we'll live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It's not a miracle, we just decided to go.”
- Jim Lovell
“One of the most thoughtless statements, parroted ad nauseam ever since rational concern for our environment exploded into an emotional syndrome, calls Man the only animal that soils its own nest. Every animal soils its nest with the products of its metabolism if unable to move away. Space technology gives us for the first time the freedom to leave our nest, at least for certain functions, in order not to soil it.”
- Krafft Ehricke
“Today the human race is a single twig on the tree of life, a single species on a single planet. Our condition can thus only be described as extremely fragile, endangered by forces of nature currently beyond our control, our own mistakes, and other branches of the wildly blossoming tree itself. Looked at this way, we can then pose the question of the future of humanity on Earth, in the solar system, and in the galaxy from the standpoint of both evolutionary biology and human nature. The conclusion is straightforward: Our choice is to grow, branch, spread and develop, or stagnate and die.”
- Robert Zubrin
“This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation.”
- Richard M. Nixon
“If humanity persists and endures, in time we will come face to face with the evolution of our sun. In a few billion years its slow brightening will speed up as it swells into a red giant. Earth will then be uninhabitable, as will the inner regions of the Solar System. Yet there will be other more clement stars to which our descendents may wish to migrate. Certainly a society that has developed space flight and space colonization will have the advantage of never thereafter having to stand hostage to fortune.”
- T. A. Heppenheimer
“I believe very strongly that the International Space Station should be termintated. That money ought to be used to re-establish a moon base and we ought to be launching a manned mission to Mars.”
- Tom Harkin
“There are so many benefits to be derived from space exploration and exploitation; why not take what seems to me the only chance of escaping what is otherwise the sure destruction of all that humanity has struggled to achieve for 50,000 years?”
- Isaac Asimov
“We of course have our problems, to say the least, in comportment towards ourselves and our environment, but admittance to the cosmos and the spatial infinity and temporal immortality it provides may well be just the remedy for these age-old problems. Access to the boundless resources of the universe may once and for all puncture the pressure of population and politics of scarcity which have generated war, oppression, and plagued our species from the start.”
- Paul Levinson
“Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring--not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive... If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds.”
- Carl Sagan