David Grinspoon Quotes
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My high-school friends and I felt part of a community of smart, forward-looking space and technology freaks.
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I'm an astrobiologist, and I come from a planetary science background, so in a very broad sense, I study the evolution of planetary environments.
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Among the radio astronomers of SETI - the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - it's only sort-of a joke that the true hallmark of intelligent life is the creation of radio astronomy.
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Fixing global warming is more important than astronomy.
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There are other planets besides the Earth and Mars. I'd like to remind you that studying Venus is vital to understanding life elsewhere.
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The hallmark of the human species is great adaptability.
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I think chemists always think they know more than they know, because nature has a lot of possible pathways it can try.
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Astrobiology is the science of life in the universe. It's an attempt to scientifically deal with the question of whether or not we're alone in the universe, looking at the past of life, the present of life, and the future of life. It's an interdisciplinary study incorporating astronomy, biology, and the Earth sciences.
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The future peopling of Mars is much more than a scientific endeavor. It is a step of historic and spiritual importance for the human race.
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I do a lot of work with NASA and am involved in research projects studying planetary evolution, Earth-like planets, and potential conditions for life elsewhere.
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It turns out one of my dad's best friends was Carl Sagan when I was little. They were both Harvard professors.
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Literally, my earliest memory, my earliest vivid memory, is the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. Yeah, I was in fourth grade, and I was just so captivated. And I think you'll find a lot of space scientists of my generation will say the same thing. Apollo was a big event for them.
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Time and time again, our species has escaped existential threats by reinventing ourselves, finding new skills not coded in our genes to survive new challenges not previously encountered.
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There's eco-pragmatism, where you recognize, 'Yeah, we live on a planet that's permanently altered by humanity, and rather than seek to return to or preserve pure wilderness, we recognize that's an illusion, and we proceed under the new knowledge that we live, in fact, in a human-dominated planet.'
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Certainly for me, as an astrobiologist, science fiction has played an important role. One of the quandaries of our field is that we are trying to study and search for something - life - that we can't define in a rigorous way. We only have one example of a biosphere, so we can't really give a good definition.
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As a young planet, Venus was losing hydrogen rapidly to space. The oceans boiled off, and after some period of time, perhaps 600 million years, there was no surface water.
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Seriously, we should start taxing churches and have tax-exempt places for worship and study of nature and art. Charge ten bucks for Sunday services and make the Botanic Gardens free.
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What I'm interested in is the conversations going on about the Anthropocene and what it means to view ourselves as a part of Earth's geological history.
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Responsible global behaviour is ultimately an act of self-preservation of, by, and for the global beast that modern technological humanity has become.
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There was a long history of people believing there was life on Venus. It was about the same size as Earth. It had clouds. It was commonly believed it was tropical - wet, hot and steamy.
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We need visions of a future in which we have applied our infinite creativity to the task of living on a finite world, where we have embraced our role, become comfortable and proficient as planet-shapers, and learned to use our technological skills to enhance the survival prospects not just of humanity but of all life on Earth.
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Once we become a multiplanet species, our chances to live long and prosper will take a huge leap skyward.
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Mars does not have an atmosphere and does not have a magnetic field today, so the planet doesn't have the protection from radiation that our atmosphere and magnetic fields provide us on Earth.
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There's no question to my mind that saving our civilization and many other species is more important than our ability to do ground-based astronomy for a few decades.