During the next 50 years, in countless cycles, in countless entrepreneurial companies, this let's just go and do it mentality will help us finally get off the planet and irreversibly open the space frontier. The capital and tools are finally being placed into the hands of those willing to risk, willing to fail, willing to follow the dreams.

Space is not a two-year objective. It used to be, in the early '60's, we had this eye candy of Mercury and Gemini and Apollo and every year we would do something more and more and it met those needs. But the easy stuff has been done.

The price to generate a megawatt or a gigawatt of energy is coming down year after year. We're learning how to print it, make it more efficient.

By 2020 the U.S. will be short 91,000 doctors. There's no way we can educate enough doctors to make up that shortfall, and other countries are far worse off.

I founded a launch company called International Microspace when I graduated medical school in 1989. We were trying to build a microsatellite launcher.

NASA calls stuff nominal instead of phenomenal, like it really is. So I have given up that there is going to be a balance and NASA is going to do certain things and we are finally in a state of existence where small groups of individuals can do extraordinary things, funded by single people.

Many have built their careers buttressing the status quo, reinforcing what theyve already accomplished, and resisting the radical thinking that can topple their legacy - not exactly the attitude you want when trying to drive innovation forward.