Rusty Schweickart Quotes

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.

So I just let go with one hand, and just sort of swung around, looked at the Earth below and the black space above and the sun over my shoulder. And, I mean, it was this incredible, spectacular view.

We are now able to very slightly and subtly reshape the solar system in order to enhance human survival.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.