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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.