Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

Sooner or later the space program will need to save us by detecting and deflecting an incoming asteroid.

I don't want to be the embarrassment of the galaxy to have had the power to deflect an asteroid, and then not and end up going extinct. We'd be the laughingstock of the aliens of the cosmos if that were the case.

Consider that the overwhelming majority of those 40,000 near-Earth asteroids are small enough to fit on the parking lot at the mall. And while these rocky runts won't cause Armageddon, they could still flatten such popular hominid hangouts as Manhattan or downtown Des Moines.

I don't want people to spend their nights worrying about getting hit by asteroids. But I do want them to encourage their political leaders to invest in the insurance, which will allow us to prevent it from happening.

Asteroid detection, tracking, and defense of our planet is something that NASA, its interagency partners, and the global community take very seriously.

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.

My expertise is the space program and what it should be in the future based on my experience of looking at the transitions that we've made between pre-Sputnik days and getting to the moon.

I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.

We have the capability - physically, technically - to protect the Earth from asteroid impacts. We are now able to very slightly and subtly reshape the solar system in order to enhance human survival.

Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.

If I can get some student interested in science, if I can show members of the general public what's going on up there in the space program, then my job's been done.

After Apollo 17, America stopped looking towards the next horizon. The United States had become a space-faring nation, but threw it away. We have sacrificed space exploration for space exploitation, which is interesting but scarcely visionary.

For NASA, space is still a high priority.

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

What if an asteroid were to strike planet Earth? What could we possibly do to prevent it? However many guys we have working on this problem, it can't possibly be enough.

I don't think the space station is innovative. Going to the moon was innovative because we had no idea how to do it.

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program.

We are not particularly interested in the prestige of space, but in the scientific aspects of it.

The conquest of space is not merely a technological project of interest to a handful of select scientists and specialists, valuable though that research and information may be.

We look forward with great anticipation to see the course that the National Space Council charts for America's future in space.

Space exploration has taken a tremendous technological leap. India as a developing nation has been recognized globally for how it has economized its missions, which have been comparatively low-cost compared with other countries.

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.

Space travel leading to skylife is vital to human survival, because the question is not whether we will be hit by an asteroid, but when. A planetary culture that does not develop spacefaring is courting suicide. All our history, all our social progress and growing insight will be for nothing if we perish. No risk of this kind, however small it might be argued to be, is worth taking, and no cost to prevent it is too great. No level of risk is acceptable when it comes to all or nothing survival.

Of course, I was completely enthralled by the space program as a kid - particularly Apollo 11 - and was glued to the television like most of the world. Then I stopped thinking about it too much. I was a little disappointed that they weren't going on to Mars at the time, but I didn't think much of it. I was more interested in becoming a director at that point in my life and falling in love, things like that.

President Bush announced we're going to Mars, which means he's given up on Earth.