Martin Rees Quotes

The Space Program is an investment of the nation’s future…. Humans will not be confined to this planet forever.

We have the ability to completely change our environment to go... to take on... to inherit, in a certain sense, things far beyond our DNA, and that's inheritable. And we can see evolution in action as our ideas evolve and undergo a kind of Darwinian selection not at the DNA level. And we can go off into space.

Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving.

As the scene of life would be more the cold emptiness of space than the warm, dense atmosphere of planets, the advantage of containing no organic material at all, so as to be independent of both these conditions, would be increasingly felt.

I firmly believe in what Stephen Hawking says - that if we don't get off this planet, we're going to go berserk. We have to have more space.

I think the potential for man is so enormous, if we can stay alive long enough, we're going to be seeing a lot of what Star Trek is projecting.

The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it's going to become multiplanetary, or it's going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there's going to be an extinction event.

I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space.

It's very exciting that people could actually live on another planet.

It's more fun having him as everyman in the 25th Century. It is better to concentrate on what this planet will be like 500 years from now, and not be dealing with little aliens in space and all that related stuff.

I think the human race doesn't have a future if it doesn't go into space.

It's important that we attempt to extend life beyond Earth now. It is the first time in the four billion-year history of Earth that it's been possible, and that window could be open for a long time - hopefully it is - or it could be open for a short time. We should err on the side of caution and do something now.

We're the first technology-creating species. We use technology to extend our reach. We didn't stay in the caves, and we haven't stayed on the planet. To play jazz with our genomes and the universe might ultimately be what we're all about.

I believe, I truly believe, that humans will be living off of this planet, at some point in the future. It's inevitable for us, and it seems like a reasonable and realistic progression for us as a human race. We won't last on this planet - not forever.

Why would you need to expand beyond the solar system if you already have access to all the information you need, and you've essentially insulated yourself against a planetary apocalypse? Maybe that's enough.

I think that the future of the human race is to spread through the universe, and now is the time that we should be laying the foundations for that.

The sooner we become a multi-planet species, the safer the species is, and the stronger the guarantee that we're going to continue to evolve.

I understand that space travel and expansion is just as much about altering ourselves, our attitudes, our social structures, our very biology, as it is about altering the places we choose to live.

Planet colonization is not a short term concern of mine. The physical limitations of space travel render it low on the list for me.

So we say, oh, my goodness; we think we've found another Earth-like planet. We will start trying to figure out how to get there. And I have this strong belief that whatever we think we can do, whatever we can dream, we can do.

Even if we never reach the stars by our own efforts, in the millions of years that lie ahead it is almost certain that the stars will come to us. Isolationism is neither a practical policy on the national or cosmic scale. And when the first contact with the outer universe is made, one would like to think that Mankind played an active and not merely a passive role-that we were the discoverers, not the discovered.

The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.

Men are weak now, and yet they transform the Earth's surface. In millions of years their might will increase to the extent that they will change the surface of the Earth, its oceans, the atmosphere, and themselves. They will control the climate and the Solar System just as they control the Earth. They will travel beyond the limits of our planetary system; they will reach other Suns, and use their fresh energy instead of the energy of their dying luminary.

When you think about what Homo sapiens are about, you almost feel that we are replacing ourselves. We won't be able to breathe and breed on this earth, so we replace ourselves with androids that can do. The androids can go up into space and take the future of humanity forward because maybe we just bow out with a carbon-based epoch.

I left Earth three times and found no other place to go. Please take care of Spaceship Earth.