Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program.

NASA has spin-offs, and it's a huge and very impressive list, including accurate and affordable LASIK eye surgery.

You can't have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That's a recipe for disaster. And I don't mean just whether a politician is scientifically literate, but people who vote politicians into office.

Curiously, light-loving green plants reject the Sun's green light, reflecting it back at you, which is why they look green.

Science is a fundamental part of our existence.

I want and need the artist to take me to new places, and the new place that Van Gogh took me not the sky as it is but the sky as he felt it. And the more of us that feel the universe, the better off we will be in this world.

The urge to miniaturize electronics did not exist before the space program. I mean our grandparents had radios that was furniture in the living room. Nobody at the time was saying, 'Gee, I want to carry that in my pocket.' Which is a non-thought.