To view space as, "Well, let's go to Mars now," or "Let's do this now," maybe we should rethink of space as our backyard and have a suite of launch vehicles that can enable any ambition a person has regarding space. It's the same way you can go to buy a car: I want to go offroading, I'll buy this model. I'm a city driver, that's this model. I want to use less fuel, well, that's this model. They're not selling you one car, you have options. So when I think of space, I think of having options.

Our planet has been around only for four and a half billion years. Let's imagine a planet that has life on it such as life is on Earth and it's seven billion years old. Let's say that planet evolved intelligence. Well, that intelligence would be way more advanced than what we call intelligence here on Earth. How long has intelligence been around on Earth as we've come to define it?

How many times have you heard a person in a workplace say, "I wasn't trained for this!" That's an impossible reaction from a physicist, who would say, instead, "Cool. A problem I've never seen before. Let's see how I can figure out how to solve it!"

Evil or not, the recording industry kept Auto-Tune on the down-low. Cher's producer forced Auto-Tune to jump suddenly from one pitch to the next.

Perhaps we’ve never been visited by aliens because they have looked upon earth and decided there’s no sign of intelligent life.

Politics will take whatever shape it needs for people to get elected. But at the end of the day, the population remains and that's really, as an educator, who I care about.

There are countless space activities that would be no less exciting than the moon missions were, I have no doubt. The search for life on Mars, for example.