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"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."
-- Astronaut Philip Chapman in Physics Today, 1978
"I firmly believe that we who are alive and can think today--in the closing years of the 20th century--have a commitment to our species to make sure that the flicker of movement we have thus managed in space stays sufficiently kindled so that the people of the 21st century can build upon and extend the human abode from Earth to the cosmos beyond." -- Paul Levinson, introduction to an online conference, Connected Education, Inc., 1987
"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. Thus far, we have failed to use our new powers for the ends they were intended. The result is an accelerating slide toward disaster... We need to rupture the barriers that confine us to the land mass of a single planet. By breaking out, we can assure our survival and the continuation of Life." -- Marshall Savage, The Millennial Project, 1992
"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, "Implications of the Copernician Principle For Our Future Prospects," Nature, 1993
"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 in Life in the Universe, AAAS Selected Symposium 31, 1979
"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 Hubbard in L-5 News, 1977
"Until now in world's history, whenever we've had a dark age, its 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, speech at Newark College of Engineering, 1974
"We should be most careful about retreating from the specific challenge of our age. We should be reluctant to turn our back upon the frontier of this epoch... We cannot be indifferent to space, because the grand slow march of our intelligence has brought us, in our generation, to a point from which we can explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be to deny our history, our capabilities." -- James Michener, testimony before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, 1979
"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." -- Anthropologist Margaret Mead, "Man on the Moon," Redbook Magazine, 1969
"If two or three hundred years from now an earthbound civilization is dying ... and they look back at the opportunity that we have here at the close of the twentieth century to move out into space and they see that we didn't do anything with it ... I don't want history to judge us on having blown this opportunity, and I think history will judge us on this more than on any other issue." -- Paul Levinson, speech at Western Behavioral Sciences
Institute, 1986
"It may be that the venture into space is the product of biological determinism which impels us to explore a new environment when we are technologically ready." -- Richard S. Lewis, Appointment on the Moon, 1968
"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, "Biological Significance of the Space Effort," in Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 1966
"I think that space flight is a condition of Nature that comes into effect when an intelligent species reaches the saturation point of its planetary habitat combined with a certain level of technological ability... I think it is a built-in gene-directed drive for the spreading of the species and its continuation." -- Donald A. Wollheim, The Universe Makers, 1971
"One of the most fundamental aspects of life is its relentless pursuit of new environmental niches to colonize. It seems inevitable that, sooner or later, living things will spread off the planet--if not us, then perhaps whatever comes after us. Seen this way, a space station need not be a tin can. It can be like the reptile's egg, the bold evolutionary innovation that contained the water and the salts of the oceans and brought them safely onto land." -- Corey Powell, "MIR vs. Pathfinder," LA Times, 1997
"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, Disturbing the Universe, 1979
"It is inconsistent with the nature of life--as revealed by the record of the past--for a species to remain in an environmental niche when the opportunity exists for escape. Most individuals of the species remain within the security and comfort of the environment to which they have become adapted... [But] certain individuals will always probe the limits of their environment. These adventurous few are the vanguard of a new development in the evolution of life... As most fish remained in the water, and most apes remained in the forest, just so, in tomorrow's world most of us will remain on the earth... But a small percentage of the human species ... will leave us, and their descendants will spread out into the galaxy." -- Robert Jastrow, Introduction to The Next Ten Thousand Years by Adrian Berry, 1974
"We should have positive expectations of what is in the universe, not fears and dreads. We are made with the realization that we're not Earthbound, and that our acceptance of the universe offers us room to explore and extend outward. It's like being in a dark room and imagining all sorts of terrors. But when we turn on the light--technology--suddenly it's just a room where we can stretch out and explore. 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, "The Future is Now" in Update on Space Volume I, 1981
"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." -- Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, "From the Moon to the Millenium,"
Albuquerque Tribune,1999
"When the history of our galaxy is written, and for all any of us know it may already have been, if Earth gets mentioned at all it won't be because its inhabitants visited their own moon. That first step, like a newborn's cry, would be automatically assumed. What would be worth recording is what kind of civilization we earthlings created and whether or not we ventured out to other parts of the galaxy." -- Astronaut Michael Collins, Liftoff, 1988
"We shall move out there, not because we want to but because we have to. There is an immediate reason for going--the earth's surface may soon become uninhabitable because of nuclear war or some other catastrophe, and we want the human race to survive--but there is a deeper and more compelling reason for going. We are what our remote ancestors were--colonists, always on the march toward better environments, always evolving, always adapting, learning how to control the physical world to our advantage. It is inconceivable that we have here and now come to the end of our long march, reduced to clinging to what we have, with no prospect for improvement--no hope. Rather we must view our present situation, with all its very real problems, as merely an overnight campsite along the way." -- Edward Gilfillan, Migration to the Stars, 1975
"When it is realized that man's future, his greatest fulfillment, may lie in the cosmos and not on the surface of the earth at all, then it is strongly suggested that mankind has not reached maturity but only completed gestation. Man is a creature not merely of the earth. Man's creation began as a turbulence in a cloud of gas in infinite space and proceeded by condensation into a galaxy, stars, planets, and finally the seas and continents of the earth. These speculations lead inescapably to the concept that man is the creature of the cosmos, not of the earth; that the earth is only his womb, his chrysalis perhaps." -- Hamilton B. Webb, "Speculations on Space and Human Destiny," 1961
"We are at the stage of the flower bud, not the bloom; the pregnant woman, not the newborn. In this stage we represent only the potential for the extension of life into the cosmos, with no guarantee that we will succeed. Humanity is the means by which evolution has determined achieve its end... Not to act in building civilizations beyond this planet is quite literally to go against the very demand of the universe. If we are resolved to participate in this effort, we must be willing to get very close to the evolutionary tension throbbing within us, and boldly act in accordance with it." -- Steven Wolfe, Ad Astra, 2004
"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, Planetary Dreams, 1999
"Eventually we must leave Earth--at least a certain number of our progeny must as our sun approaches the end of its solar life cycle. But just as terrestrial explorers have always led the way for settlers, this will also happen extraterrestrially. Earth is our cradle, not our final destiny." -- Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, The Way of the Explorer, 1996
"The earth is the cradle of humankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever." -- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1895
"As soon as somebody demonstrates the art of flying, settlers from our species of man will not be lacking [on the moon and Jupiter]... Given ships or sails adapted to the breezes of heaven, there will be those who will not shrink from even that vast expanse." -- Johannes Kepler, letter to Galileo, 1610
"In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle which it must never outstep, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York." -- Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon, 1865
"A time will come when science will transform [our bodies] by means which we cannot conjecture... 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 quarters of the universe." -- Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man, 1872
"It is conceivable that some great unexpected mass of matter should presently rush upon us out of space, whirl sun and planets aside like dead leaves before the breeze, and collide with and utterly destroy every spark of life upon this earth... It is conceivable, too, that some pestilence may presently appear, some new disease, that will destroy not 10 or 15 or 20 per cent of the earth's inhabitants as pestilences have done in the past, but 100 per cent, and so end our race... And finally there is the reasonable certainty that this sun of ours must some day radiate itself toward extinction... There surely man must end. That of all such nightmares is the most insistently convincing. And yet one doesn't believe it. At least I do not. And I do not believe in these things because I have come to believe in certain other things--in the coherency and purpose in the world and in the greatness of human destiny. Worlds may freeze and suns may perish, but there stirs something within us now that can never die again." -- H. G. Wells, lecture at Royal Institution of London, 1902
"A manuscript I wrote on January 14, 1918 ... and deposited in a friend's safe ... speculated as to the last migration of the human race, as consisting of a number of expeditions sent out into the regions of thickly distributed stars, taking in a condensed form all the knowledge of the race, using either atomic energy or hydrogen, oxygen and solar energy... [It] was contained in an inner envelope which suggested that the writing inside should be read only by an optimist." -- Robert Goddard, "Material for an Autobiography," 1927
"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, The World, the Flesh and the Devil, 1929
"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. We have said a great deal about the advantages of migration into space, but not all can be said or even imagined." -- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, The Aims of Astronautics, 1929
"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, said to a friend, 1930s
"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, Sunday after the War, 1944
"Sooner or later for good or ill, a united mankind, equipped with science and power, will probably turn its attention to the other planets, not only for economic exploitation, but also as possible homes for man... The goal for the solar system would seem to be that it should become an interplanetary community of very diverse worlds ... each contributing to the common experience its characteristic view of the universe. Through the pooling of this wealth of experience, through this "commonwealth of worlds," new levels of mental and spiritual development should become possible, levels at present quite inconceivable to man." -- Olaf Stapledon, address to the British Interplanetary Society, 1948
"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, "A Plea for a Coordinated Space Program" in The Complete Book of Outer Space, 1953
"The point to remember is that a giant leap into space can be a giant leap toward peace down below." -- Willy Ley, "The Leap into Space" in The Race for Space, edited by Paul Neimark, 1957
"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, Man Into Space, 1957
"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, Time magazine, 1958
"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, Interplanetary Flight, 1950
"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, The Outline of History, 1920
"If you are reading this, and feel discouraged by an inability to communicate to others your own feelings about the importance of an active space development effort, comfort yourself with this thought. If you want to be on the leading edge of anything, you have by definition to be a couple of standard deviations away from most people. That makes you an odd-ball. The trick is to learn to accept it, then to like it--and keep on making lots of noise for what you believe in." -- Charles Sheffield, Keynote Address AAS Annual Meeting, 1978
"Remember, the space settlement dream was born in you so that you would strive for its fulfillment in this generation, not defer it to the next. It was, and is, a call to you to take some action in this lifetime; and if you are not meant to see it through to completion, then you must at least lay a foundation on which those who will follow can build." -- Steven Wolfe, Ad Astra, 2004
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