![\"\"](\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-8apkG9vlCyQ\/T8qc0dBFWzI\/AAAAAAAACbM\/pJgaGEeWk-U\/s1600\/KMBA-Ira+Glass+Quote.png\")
<\/a>“From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow.”\nAeschylus
\n<\/span><\/div>\n
\n“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.
\n<\/span>Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
\n<\/span>Margaret Mead<\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cSecurity is mostly a superstition. \u00a0It does not exist in nature, nor do the Children of Men as a whole experience it. “I think privately funded missions are the only way to go “Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, and bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, “As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. “We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,\u00a0but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.” “The important thing is to start; to lay a plan,\u00a0and then follow it step by step no matter how small “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” “It is virtually an ironclad rule that existing enterprises project increasing capabilities linearly.” \u00a0“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” “By logic and reason\u00a0we die hourly,\u00a0by imagination we live.” “Both those who wait for permission, or those who fear risk and wait for safety will also pay the consequences of their inaction: “Little minds are tame and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them”. “Now we have the capability to leave the planet, and I think we should give careful consideration to taking that option. “One who fears failure limits his activities. “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; “The ‘Limits To Growth’ people see Earth as a life raft in hostile space. Hence, they see man’s world as a closed system — “If you are looking for perfect safety, you will do well to sit on a fence and watch the birds; “Don’t tell me that man doesn’t belong out there. \u201cShips and sails proper for the heavenly air should be fashioned. \u201cUse every letter you write, every conversation you have, every meeting you attend, to express your fundamental beliefs and dreams. “Ultimately we don’t really want 10,000 people on Mars……we want millions.” \u201cThis single individual completely changed something. “The best writing advice I\u2019ve ever heard: Don’t write like you went to college.” “I myself would be disappointed if there is not a person on Mars within 20 years,\u00a0and i hope it is closer to 10.” “Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” “I would rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory \u201cThe more laws and restrictions there are, “From bondage to spiritual faith. \u201c…to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness of strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance that comes from freedom. People of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant expansion. He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise. But never again will such gifts of free lands offer themselves. Each frontier did indeed furnish a new opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its restraints and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have accompanied the frontier. What the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bonds of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. And now, five centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of two hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.\u201d \u201cThis proposition being make publike and coming to the scanning of all, it raised many variable opinions amongst men, and caused many fears and doubts amongst themselves. Some, from their reasons and hops conceived, laboured to stiff up and incourage the rest to undertake and prosecute the same; others, againe, out of their fears, objected against it, and sought to diverte from it, aledging many things, and those neither unreasonable nor unprobable; as that it was a great designe, and subjecte to many unconceivable perills and dangers [\u2026] \u00a0It was answered that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages.\u201d “Dream strange things and make them look like truth.” \u201cWhy join the navy if you can be a pirate?\u201d “Only God gets things right the first time.” \u201cIt’s getting easier and easier to do amazing things from wherever you happen to be in the world. “So many suns, so many earths, and every one of them flock\u2019d with so many herbs, trees and animals, “When I stretch my Imagination thro\u2019 and beyond our system of planets, beyond the visible fix\u2019d stars themselves, “Celestial bodies which are not yet inhabited will be hereafter, “The moon, it turns out, is a great place for men. One-sixth gravity must be a lot of fun, and when Armstrong and Aldrin went into their bouncy little dance, like two happy children, it was a moment not only of triumph but of gaiety. The moon, on the other hand, is a poor place for flags. Ours looked stiff and awkward, trying to float on the breeze that does not blow. (There must be a lesson here somewhere.) It is traditional, of course, for explorers to plant the flag, but it struck us, as we watched with awe and admiration and pride, that our two fellows were universal men, not national men, and should have been equipped accordingly. Like every great river and every great sea, the moon belongs to none and belongs to all. It still holds the key to madness, still controls the tides that lap on shores everywhere, still guards the lovers who kiss in every land under no banner but the sky. What a pity that in our moment of triumph we did not forswear the familiar Iwo Jima scene and plant instead a device acceptable to all: a limp white handkerchief, perhaps, symbol of the common cold, which, like the moon, affects us all, unites us all.” Dream crushers<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” “Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances.” “There is no likehood man can ever tap the power of the atom.” “Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” “I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, “If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. “So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, “Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than “Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.” “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” “Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction”. “The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from\u00a0the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon”. “640K ought to be enough for anybody.” “But what… is it good for?” “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as\u00a0a means of communication. “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value.\u00a0Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but\u00a0in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.” “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” Human Survival\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n “Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization “I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. \u00a0“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.” “The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.” “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.” “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.” “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.” “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.” “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?” “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.” “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.” “The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program. “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.” “Space exploration must be undertaken not only out of simple human curiosity but also to further the survival of the species. The twentieth century has seen the unprecedented development and proliferation of magnificent technologies. Many of them, through design, ignorance, or misuse, are capable of destroying life as well as enhancing it. Space exploration alone holds the promise of eventual escape from a dying planet, provided we wisely manage our resources in the meantime and actually survive that long.” “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!” “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.” “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.”
\nAvoiding danger is no safer in the long run\u00a0than outright exposure.
\nLife is either daring adventure, or nothing.\u201d
\nHelen Keller<\/span><\/p>\n
\nto Mars with humans because I think the best\u00a0way to go
\nis on “one-way”\u00a0colonization flights and no government
\nwill likely sanction such a risk.
\nThe timing for this could well be within the next 20 years.
\nIt will fall within the hands of a small group of tech billionaires
\nwho view such missions as the way
\nto leave their mark on humanity.”
\nPeter Diamandis
\n<\/span>
\n“When we walk to the edge
\nof all the light we have
\nand take the step into the
\ndarkness of the unknown,
\nwe must believe that
\none of two things will happen….
\nThere will be something
\nsolid for us to stand on
\nor we will be taught to fly. ”
\nPatrick Overton<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nsafe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.”
\nclassified advertisement attributed to South Pole explorer Shackleton<\/span><\/p>\n
\nJump.\u00a0It is not as wide as you think.”
\nNative American Proverb<\/span><\/p>\n
\nOliver Wendell Holmes<\/span><\/p>\n
\nor large one by itself may seem.”
\nCharles Lindbergh<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nMax De Pree<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWayne Dyer<\/span><\/p>\n
\nSteve Jurvetson<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nJapanese proverb<\/span><\/p>\n
\nJonathan Butler Yeats<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThey will live insignificant lives and die little deaths, waiting and fearing.
\nThey will never see the stars, not even in their dreams.”
\nJames and Alcestis Oberg. From: Pioneering Space<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWashington Irving<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nMan as always gone where he has been able to go, it is a basic satisfaction of his inquisitive nature,
\nand I think we all lose a little bit if we choose to turn our backs on further exploration. Exploration produces a mood in people,
\na widening of interest, a stimulation of the thought process… Our universe should be explored by microscope and by telescope…
\nWhen man fails to push himself to the possible limits of his universe in a physical sense, I think it causes a mental
\nslackening as well, and we are all the poorer for it. Space is the only physical frontier we have left…”
\nMichael Collins, Apollo 11 Astronaut, Carrying the Fire<\/span><\/p>\n
\nFailure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently”.
\nHenry Ford<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nwho strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions,
\nand spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement;
\nand who at the worst, if he fails at least fails while daring greatly”.
\nTheodore Roosevelt<\/span><\/p>\n
\nrestricted to Earth. I don’t. Humanity’s action world is no more closed than it is flat.”
\nEhricke<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nbut, if you really wish to learn to fly, you must mount a machine and\u00a0become acquainted with its tricks and actual trials.”
\nWilbur Wright, 1901<\/span><\/p>\n
\nMan belongs wherever he wants to go-and he’ll do plenty well when he gets there.”
\nWernher Von Braun, 1958<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThen there will also be people, who do not shrink from the vastness of space.\u201d
\nJohannes Kepler to Galileo Galilei, 1609<\/span><\/p>\n
\nAffirm to others the vision of the world you want. \u00a0You are a free, immensely powerful source of life and goodness.
\nAffirm it, spread it, radiate it, think day and night about it, and you will see a miracle happen: the Greatness of Your Own Life.\u201d
\nDr. Robert Mueller, Former U.N. Assistant Secretary General<\/span><\/p>\n
\nElon Musk<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThat’s the kind of thing people can do anywhere.
\nThey can do it in Seattle; they can do it in North Dakota.”
\nJeff Bezos<\/span><\/p>\n
\nAlice Kahn<\/span><\/p>\n
\nElon Musk<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nBoldness has genius, power, and magic in it!\u201d
\nWilliam Hutchinson Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition<\/span><\/p>\n
\nEleanor Roosevelt<\/span><\/p>\n
\nthan by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University.”
\nWilliam Buckley, Jr.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nThe poorer people become.
\nThe sharper men\u2019s weapons,
\nThe more trouble in the land.
\nThe more ingenious and clever men are,
\nThe more strange things happen.
\nThe more rules and regulations,
\nThe more thieves and robbers.”
\nTao Te Ching # 57<\/span>
\n(written 2,500 years ago)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nFrom faith to great courage.
\nFrom courage to liberty.
\nFrom liberty to abundance.
\nFrom abundance to complacency.
\nFrom complacency to selfishness.
\nFrom selfishness to apathy.
\nFrom apathy to dependency.
\nAnd from dependency back again into bondage.”
\nThomas MacCauley, 1857\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nLecture given by a 19th Century Historian form the University of Wisconsin.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nGov. William Bradford, Of Plimoth Plantation, 1621.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nNathaniel Hawthorne<\/span><\/p>\n
\nSteve Jobs<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nStephen King<\/span><\/p>\n
\nYou can physically be anywhere as you do it, and you can affect the entire world with what you build.\u201d
\nJeff Bezos<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nand adorned with so many seas and mountains!”
\nChristian Huygens, 1698<\/span><\/p>\n
\ninto that space that is every way infinite, and conceive it fill\u2019d with suns like ours, each with a chorus of worlds for ever moving round him,
\nthen this little ball on which we move seems . . . to be almost nothing.”
\nBenjamin Franklin, 1728<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nwhen their development has reached a later stage.\u201d
\nImmanuel Kant, 1755<\/span><\/p>\n
\nE. B. White, July 26, 1969<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nMarechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre<\/span><\/p>\n
\nLord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nDr. Lee DeForest, Inventor of TV<\/span><\/p>\n
\nRobert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923<\/span><\/p>\n
\nPopular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943<\/span><\/p>\n
\nand I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.”
\nThe editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957<\/span><\/p>\n
\nThe literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.”
\nSpencer Silver on the work that led to the unique\u00a0adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads<\/span><\/p>\n
\nand what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’
\nAnd they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.'”
\nSteve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in\u00a0his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\na vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”
\n1921 New York Times editorial about Goddard’s work.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nDrillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil\u2028 in 1859<\/span><\/p>\n
\nIrving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nCharles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899<\/span><\/p>\n
\nPierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872<\/span><\/p>\n
\nSir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed\u00a0Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nBill Gates, 1981<\/span><\/p>\n
\nEngineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968,\u00a0commenting on the microchip.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nKen Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977<\/span><\/p>\n
\nThe device is inherently of no value to us.”
\nWestern Union internal memo, 1876<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nDavid Sarnoff’s associates in response to his\u00a0urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nA Yale University management professor in response to\u00a0Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service.
\n(Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nH.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927<\/span><\/p>\n
\nDecca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nis obliged to become spacefaring–not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive…
\nIf our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds.”
\nCarl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994<\/span><\/p>\n
\nThere are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.”
\nStephen Hawking, interview with Daily Telegraph, 2001<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nGene Roddenberry, Planetary Report Vol. 1, 1981<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nRobert Heinlein, speech<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nRobert Zubrin, Entering Space, 1999<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWilliam E. Burrows, The Wall Street Journal, 2003<\/span><\/p>\n
\nPaul Davies, The New York Times, 2004<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nBuzz Aldrin and Rick Tumlinson, Ad Astra Online, 2006<\/span><\/p>\n
\nIsaac Asimov, speech at Rutgers University<\/span><\/p>\n
\nAstronaut John Young,”The Big Picture”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nGregory Benford and George Zebrowski, Skylife, 2000<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nAnd if we become extinct because we don’t have a space program, it’ll serve us right!”
\nLarry Niven, quoted by Arthur Clarke in interview\u00a0at Space.com, 2001<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nPoul Anderson, Is There Life on Other Worlds?, 1963<\/span><\/p>\n
\nAstronaut Edgar Mitchell, The Way of the Explorer, 1996<\/span><\/p>\n
\nRay Bradbury, Mars and the Mind of Man, 1971<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nFrank Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, 1994<\/span><\/p>\n
\nT. A. Heppenheimer, Toward Distant Suns, 1979<\/span><\/p>\n