I read ‚The High Frontier‘ in high school. I read it multiple times, and I was already primed. As soon as I read it, it made sense to me. It seemed very clear that planetary surfaces were not the right place for an expanding civilization inside our solar system.

Wandering around the web is like living in a world in which every doorway is actually one of those science fiction devices which deposit you in a completely different part of the world when you walk through them. In fact, it isn’t like it, it is it.

The fastest manned vehicle in history was Apollo 10. It reached 25,000 mph.

The strategic objective of New Shepard is to practice, and a lot of the subcomponents of New Shepard actually get directly reused on the second stage of New Glenn.

The Apollo program certainly had no real commercial value. It was done for very different reasons and, I think, very good reasons for the time. It’s an extraordinary achievement of mankind, but it wasn’t sustainable.

I grew up reading science fiction.

The smaller the planets are, they are, other things being equal, of so much the greater density; for so the powers of gravity on their several surfaces come nearer to equality. They are likewise, other things being equal, of the greater density, as they are nearer to the sun.

If we want to travel into the future, we just need to go fast. Really fast. And I think the only way we’re ever likely to do that is by going into space.

It’s time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth. Mankind has a deep need to explore, to learn, to know. We also happen to be sociable creatures. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark.

NASA has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve. It’s sad that we are turning the programme in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people.

SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company’s lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people.

Millions of students now, in all the schools of America, are reading science fiction and especially, thank God, ‚The Martian Chronicles.‘

When I die, I’m gonna leave my body to science fiction.

I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.

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

I think we have a good chance of surviving long enough to colonize the solar system.

I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That’s the pitch. We’ll see.

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

The pace of progress on Mars depends upon the pace of progress of SpaceX.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction.

You could warm Mars up, over time, with greenhouse gases.

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.

Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system.

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today – but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

We wind a simple ring of iron with coils; we establish the connections to the generator, and with wonder and delight we note the effects of strange forces which we bring into play, which allow us to transform, to transmit and direct energy at will.

You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

SpaceX has the potential of saving the U.S. government $1 billion a year. We are opposed to creating an entrenched monopoly with no realistic means for anyone to compete.

If humanity doesn’t land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.

I know Elon, we’re very like minded in many ways. We’re not conceptual twins. One thing I want us to do is go to Mars, but for me it’s one thing. He’s singularly focused on that. I think motivation wise, for me I don’t find that Plan B idea motivating. I don’t want a plan B for Earth, I want Plan B to make sure Plan A works.

We’ve gotta reinvest in space travel. We should’ve never left the moon.

I’m trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.

The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.

In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

I was afraid that science-fiction buffs and everybody would say things like, ‚You know, there’s no sound in outer space.‘

The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited.

Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.

Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.

You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on… So it’s a fixer-upper of a planet.

Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein’s general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.

We fly to 106 kilometers. We’ve always had as our mission that we always wanted to fly above the Karman line because we didn’t want there to be any asterisks next to your name about whether you’re an astronaut or not.

It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational – and I’m speaking the written science fiction, not ‚Star Trek.‘ Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they’re clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff.

America has tossed its cap over the wall of space.

Mars is the only place in the solar system where it’s possible for life to become multi-planetarian.

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

When I die, I’m leaving my body to science fiction.

I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer’s disease where they slowly began to recover other people’s lost memories.

If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I want there to be dragons inside the book. Proper labeling. Ethical labeling. I don’t want to open up my cornflakes and find that they’re full of pebbles… You need to respect the reader enough not to call it something it isn’t.

One thing that I find very unmotivating is the kind of Plan B argument: when Earth gets destroyed, you want to be somewhere else. That doesn’t work for me. We have sent robotic probes now to every place in the solar system, and this is the best one.

In order for us to have a future that’s exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we’re a space-bearing civilization.

When I was making ‚Star Wars,‘ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‚I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.‘

Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.

Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.

When I was seven or eight years old, I began to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents‘ boarding house in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when Hugo Gernsback was publishing ‚Amazing Stories,‘ with vivid, appallingly imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination.

If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.

I’m never going to go to Mars, but I’ve helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.