Rusty Schweickart Quotes

An asteroid can literally destroy 80 or 90 percent of the species that are alive on Earth. These are big events. I mean, this is called extinction.

You see the Earth as a bright blue and white Christmas tree ornament in the black sky. It's so small and so fragile - you realize that on that small spot is everything that means everything to you; all of history and art and death and birth and love.

For the first time in history, we have the chance to change the path of a celestial body. Let's realize what we're talking about here. We would be slightly changing the mechanics of our solar system to enhance our survival. That is gigantic!

We could not wipe ourselves out with a nuclear war. I do not want so sound too positive. It would be a catastrophe, but it would not be a final one. We are not powerful enough for that. An asteroid could be that powerful. That is why we need to do our homework.

I am interested in climate change and other topics too. But this thing is so huge, in the worst case we are talking about the end of our civilization.

In the short term, some deadly virus might be more important, but in the long run there is hardly anything more important than asteroids.

This whole issue of limits to growth, which provides a psychological, as well as a physical, cap on potential expansion of activity and awareness, has had a very depressing effect on many people.... I don't for a moment think that there's any concept which anyone's working with now which will be followed as a straightforward scenario. But the idea embodied in concepts such as space colonization or space industrialization, or availability of nonterrestrial resources, is fundamental, and it will change the way in which people look at the future.

There's no accepted global policy on what to do about asteroid impacts.

It would take an extremely large spacecraft to deflect a large asteroid that would be headed directly for the Earth.

If we do our homework right, never again should an asteroid that can do damage on the ground impact the Earth. We're living in a time-with our technology-we have the capability to eliminate that major shaper of evolution . . . the evolution of life on this planet.

The frontier in space, embodied in the space colony, is one in which the interactions between humans and their environment is so much more sensitive and interactive and less tolerant of irresponsibility than it is on the whole surface of the Earth. We are going to learn how to relate to the Earth and our own natural environment here by looking seriously at space colony ecologies.

By preventing dangerous asteroid strikes, we can save millions of people, or even our entire species. And, as human beings, we can take responsibility for preserving this amazing evolutionary experiment of which we and all life on Earth are a part.

We can both prevent asteroid impacts and address climate change. It's not either-or.

We need early warning systems, technologies to deflect an asteroid - and we need political preparedness as well. It needs to be clear who is to decide what, who launches the rockets, who presents which bills to its citizens. This is a planetary decision. We need to do this all together. Or it will not happen.

You almost wish you could turn off the COMM and just appreciate the deafening quiet.

Anytime we can save lives or prevent the destruction of property, we should do it.

Asteroids have hit the Earth millions of times. We can see them as shooting stars every night. When they get bigger, things get complicated. It is only a matter of time until a big one hits us. And since we can do something about it, we should.

Journalists often put things into either-or scenarios.

It is not enough to do a desktop exercise of a Beethoven symphony. You need to practice with an orchestra. The musicians need to read the notes. Otherwise it will be a disaster.

As you pass from sunlight into darkness and back again every hour and a half, you become startlingly aware how artificial are thousands of boundaries we've created to separate and define. And for the first time in your life you feel in your gut the precious unity of the Earth and all the living things it supports.

While we didn't know the dinosaurs personally, we do know that they were wiped out by an asteroid impact.

We not only need to train people, we also need to develop deflection technologies.