Rusty Schweickart Quotes & Sayings

“We're not passengers on Spaceship Earth. We're the crew.”

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

“All of us know today the value of communications satellites, weather satellites, resources satellites, etc.”

“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.”

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

“We got to the moon.”

“When you look at the origins and evolution of life on Earth, it's been severely affected by asteroid impacts through history.”

“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.”

“Americans who read the papers or watch Jay Leno have been aware for some time now that there is a slim but real possibility - about 1 in 45,000 - that an 850-foot-long asteroid called Apophis could strike Earth with catastrophic consequences on April 13, 2036.”

“Asteroids are deep-space bodies orbiting the Sun, not the Earth, and traveling to one would mean sending humans into solar orbit for the very first time. Facing those challenges of radiation, navigation and life support on a months-long trip millions of miles from home would be a perfect learning journey before a Mars trip.”