Let me put it in a rather larger picture framework. Let's go to the longest time frame, the time frame of the life of our sun. As a star, our sun is about halfway through its life cycle. In the long run, we only have a couple of billion more years likely that we can inhabit this planet. By that time, we're going to have to be out of here before our sun dies. Now, I don't think we need to wait that long, and we certainly shouldn't wait that long. At the moment, we are not on a sustainable path.
Edgar MitchellThe universe is a self-organizing, intelligent, creative, trial-and-error learning, participatory, interactive, non-locally interconnected and evolving system.
Edgar MitchellIn my opinion, fundamentalist Christians are just as bad as fundamentalist Islam and, at the very core, neither religion is like that.
Edgar MitchellTo bring the tools of science and to recognize that the flaw in the Cartesian Duality and to bring the tools of science to look at this question of mind and consciousness and to explore it using the tools of science รขโฌ" instead of saying, as has been the tradition for 400 years, that consciousness is not a proper subject for science to look at.
Edgar MitchellSpace 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.
Edgar MitchellIt's been written about as "the overview effect." All I can give you is my perspective, but most all of the people who have been in space start to see the world without boundaries. You start to think about how we can keep doing these things we're doing that are destructive of the environment and destructive of the planet. It causes you to start to think things in a quite different way than we had before.
Edgar Mitchell