Category Archives: G. Whitesides

"New Visions for Humans in Space" – Planetfest 2012 Panel Discussion

Peter Diamandis: “There is plenty of cash on this planet. Plenty of private capital. That was born in the fifties and sixties, inspired by space, who now are saying, ‘You know, I can’t take it with me, let me make a big change and invest and go into the space frontier.'” I have a question for the audience…if you had a shot of going on a one-way trip to Mars, and you had a seventy five percent chance of landing safely and living there – seventy five percent – how many folks would go on a one way trip to Mars? Raise your hand. Okay, now, hear me out…it’s a fifty-fifty shot now. How many of you in the audience that have your hands up on a fifty-fifty shot actually have a graduate degree? Ok, we’ve got plenty. Enough for a crew at least.

Foster + Partners: Virgin Galactic Spaceport New Mexico

“…we must all evangelize an exploration society predicated on settlement. This ultimately is the real cause of the exploration that we seek. To create a spacefaring civilization, a civilization of vibrant communities living and working beyond Earth. This is the crucial link which ties together space exploration, private enterprise, and public participation. Settlement is the destination for exploration’s efforts. Without it exploration is dead.” 
George Whitesides, CEO and President, Virgin Galactic 
Location: New Mexico, USA
Client: New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA) 
Tenant: Virgin Galactic
Architectural Lead Design: 
Norman Foster 
Grant Brooker 
Antoinette Nassopoulos-Erickson 
Joon Paik 
Hiroyuki Sube 
See Teck Yeo 
Kristine Ngan

“…what NASA seemed to forget was that we all wanted to go. We all wanted to go and somehow we lost that. We all wanted to go and it was almost taken away. How many people believe that they can go? And until we get that excitement back, nothing much is going to change…we all wanted to go and we were forgotten about. Those who wanted to go were forgotten.” Anthony Tether, DARPA