At the core of the risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve.

Did the Pilgrims on the Mayflower sit around Plymouth Rock waiting for a return trip? They came here to settle. And that's what we should be doing on Mars. When you go to Mars, you need to have made the decision that you're there permanently. The more people we have there, the more it can become a sustaining environment. Except for very rare exceptions, the people who go to Mars shouldn't be coming back. Once you get on the surface, you're there.

I didn't start skiing until I was 50. My wife Lois taught me how to ski. I'm proficiently conservative.

For every winner, there's a loser. And that person didn't really need to lose. They just didn't understand the game plan.

My first inclination is to be a bit skeptical about the claims that human-produced carbon dioxide is the direct contributor to global warming.

Space is not just going up and coming back down again. Space is getting into orbit and being there, living there, establishing a presence, a permanence.

I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements.