Curiosity is missing. Curiosity in particular is something that the system, not only the educational system but, the parental... what you do as a parent at home.

I bet most of the crowd does not know that there are six moons in the solar system bigger than Pluto.

The greatest explorer of recent decades is not even human.

Everything we do understand about the universe - the periodic table of elements, Einstein's laws, Newton's laws, all of chemistry, all of biology - that's 4 percent of the universe. We got to the moon on the 4 percent we do understand. We landed on Mars on the 4 percent we do understand. So the day we crack the nut of the rest of that 95 percent... Oh my gosh.

While we may lose track of certain goals intermittently throughout the decades, I think we as a nation can be nimble when we need to be. All the buzz today is on the need for science literacy. That is on the agenda in ways it hasn't been in previous decades.

My only hope is that every other alien civilization isn't doing exactly what we are doing because then everybody would be listening, nobody would be receiving, and we would collectively conclude that there is no other intelligent life in the universe.

If we have the power to turn another planet into Earth, then we have the power to turn Earth back into Earth.