“AS YOU GO THE WAY OF LIFE, YOU WILL SEE A GREAT CHASM. JUMP. IT IS NOT AS WIDE AS YOU THINK.”
Native American Proverb
“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, “Space Settlement: The Journey Within,”
presented at National Space Society conference, 2004
“It may be quite possible to bring rare species of birds and animals from Earth to the nonagricultural areas, and to have them survive and flourish. Every step toward the settlement of space will benefit conservation programs in another way: by relieving Earth of industry and of its burden of population, so that the species of animals, birds and fish now in danger on Earth will have a better chance of survival here.”
Gerard K. O’Neill’s “The High Frontier”, p. 81
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness, concerning all acts of initiative (and creation). There is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”
W.H. Murray
“By the time construction of Island Two begins […] we may be exploiting the vast reserves of the asteroids, and not long afterward, if the economics is favorable, we may shut down the lunar mines, and leave the facilities there as ghost towns.”
Gerard K. O’Neill, The High Frontier, page 198
“With energy free to all, materials available in great abundance, and mobility throughout the solar system available to an individual community, it should be more difficult in space than it is on Earth for an unsuccessful government to argue that its failure is due to unavoidable circumstances of location or resources.”
Gerard K. O’Neill’s “The High Frontier”, p. 235
“Unless people can see broad vistas of unused resources in front of them, the belief in limited resources tends to follow as a matter of course. And if the idea is accepted that the world’s resources are fixed, then each person is ultimately the enemy of every other person, and each race or nation is the enemy of every other race or nation. The extreme result is tyranny, war and even genocide. Only in a universe of unlimited resources can all men be brothers.”
Robert Zubrin, The Case for Mars, 1996
“Mankind’s journey into space, like every great voyage of discovery, will become part of our unending journey of liberation. In the limitless reaches of space, we will find liberation from tyranny, from scarcity, from ignorance and from war. We will find the means to protect this Earth and to nurture every human life, and to explore the universe. . . .This is our mission, this is our destiny.”
Ronald Reagan, speech at Houston, 1988
“The fatalism of the limits-to-growth alternative is reasonable only if one ignores all the resources beyond our atmosphere, resources thousands of times greater than we could ever obtain from our beleaguered Earth. As expressed very beautifully in the language of House Concurrent Resolution 451, ‘This tiny Earth is not humanity’s prison, is not a closed and dwindling resource, but is in fact only part of a vast system rich in opportunities…”
Gerard O’Neill, testimony before a congressional committee, 1978
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