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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