Many Americans make the mistake of assuming that space research has no values here on earth. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just as the wartime development of radar gave us the transistor, and all that it made possible, so research in space medicine holds the promise of substantial benefit for those of us who are earthbound. For our effort in space is not as some have suggested, a competitor for the natural resources that we need to develop the earth. It is a working partner and a coproducer of these resources. And nothing makes this clearer than the fact that medicine in space is going to make our lives healthier and happier here on earth. John F Kennedy, November 1963
We have a long way to go. Many weeks and months and years of long, tedious work lie ahead. There will be setbacks and frustrations and disappointments. There will be, as there always are, pressures in this country to do less in this area as in so many others, and temptations to do something else that is perhaps easier. But this research here must go on. This space effort must go on. The conquest of space must and will go ahead. That much we know. That much we can say with confidence and conviction. ibid.
Now, more than ever, we need people in space ... The events of September 11 show us how vulnerable we and our civilization are down here on Earth ... So let us use our strength, our awareness of mortality as a civilization, to do something truly lasting and earth-shaking for humanity. Let us join with the peoples and cultures of this planet, the diversities of its perspectives and religions and science, so we can leave it – not behind, but as a springboard to something better. Paul Levinson, Realspace, 2003
Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life’s long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth ... Will this happen before our technological civilization disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it forever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos, not just for our Earth. Martin Rees, Our Final Hour, 2003
Many people are shrinking from the future and from participation in the movement toward a new, expanded reality. And, like homesick travellers abroad, they are focusing their anxieties on home. The reasons are not far to seek. We are at a turning point in human history ... We could turn our attention to the problems that going to the moon certainly will not solve ... But I think this would be fatal to our future ... A society that no longer moves forward does not merely stagnate; it begins to die. Margaret Mead, Man on the Moon, 1969
If the expansion of the space of the universe is uniform in all directions, an observer located in anyone of the galaxies will see all other galaxies running away from him at velocities proportional to their distances from the observer. George Gamow
Throughout the universe far from planet Earth thousands of unexplained violent enigmas aggressively eat away at the very fabric of outer space. These galactic engines of destruction go by one name: black holes. Decoding the Past s3e6: Earth’s Black Hole, History 2007
But are black holes limited into outer space? Some are now asking the question, is it possible that the forces that created black holes are here on Earth? ibid.
Albert Einstein realised that a man in the emptiness of space would not be able to detect whether he was falling under gravity. Einstein called this a happy idea. But in 1960, five years after Einstein’s death, Joe Kittinger made the idea a reality. He was part of a US Air Force team studying the effects of high altitude on the human body. He never achieved the fame of Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong, but to all intents and purposes Joe Kittinger was the first man in space. Three hours after lift-off his balloon was thirty kilometres above the Earth, three times higher than a jet airliner. And then, carrying a film camera, Kittinger did something amazing: he jumped. High above the clouds in the incredibly thin air Kittinger had no sense of falling ... Kittinger was the first man to reach the speed of sound without an aircraft. Unfolding Universe, Discovery 2002
The huge cake represented by the space program was shared out according to classic mafia rules: three states, California, Texas and Florida monopolised everything. Dark Side of the Moon, 2002
It’s a bit of a diversionary argument in my opinion – Did we land on the Moon? ... Is there more advanced technology than rocket technology that can go way beyond that in a secret space program? ... Richplanet TV with Andrew Johnson checktheevidence online, Showcase 2, Richard D Hall
The argument over whether we landed with Apollo is a diversion ... from the secret space program and possibly that there is stuff on the moon. Richplanet TV: Andrew Johnson returns
You’re hurtling through space at a hundred thousand kilometres an hour. Every year our planet the Earth travels around the sun and we go with it. Orbit: Earth’s Extraordinary Journey I, BBC 2012
Once you’ve been up there you know you’ve been some place. Rebel Without a Cause 1955 starring James Dean & Natalie Wood & Sal Mineo & Jim Backus & Ann Doran & Corey Allen & William Hopper & Rochelle Hudson & Edward Platt & Nick Adams et al, director Nicholas Ray, Jim in planetarium
We will disappear into the blackness of the space from which we came. Destroyed as we began in a burst of gas and fire. The heavens are still and cold once more. In all the immensity of our universe and the galaxies beyond, the Earth will not be missed. In the infinite reaches of space the problems of man seem trivial indeed. And man existing alone seems himself an episode of little consequence. That’s all. ibid.
It’s as though we are experiencing relative dilation in an amazingly compressed space. Red Dwarf s4e4: White Hole, Kryten to Rimmer, BBC 1991
It’s Space – black with twinkly bits. Red Dwarf s7e8: Nanrchy, Lister, BBC 1997
Now let’s start by getting one thing straight – I’m not a do-gooder. If you’re a bum, if you can’t break off from the booze or whatever makes you a bad risk, then get out. Now I don’t pretend to tell you how to find happiness and love when every day is just a struggle to survive. But I do insist that you do survive. Because the days and the years ahead are worth living for. And one day soon man is going to be able to harness incredible energies, maybe even the atom. Energies that could ultimately hurl us to [inaudible] world in some sort of space ship. And the men that reach out into space will be able to find ways to feed the hungry millions of the world and cure their diseases. They will be able to find a way to give each man hope and a common future. And those are the days worth living for. Star Trek s1e28: The City on the Edge of Forever, Joan Collins’ speech
We may have found the first instance of what is called Null Space. Star Trek: The Next Generation s5e17: The Outcast
Out here in space, no one is completely independent. We all depend on one another. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s2e6: Melora, Bashir
That platform – it’s a transportation device. Extremely sophisticated – it operates on the principle of folding space. Star Trek: Voyager s1e10: Prime Factors, Harry to Janeway
Space is disease and danger and darkness and silence. Star Trek XI 2009 starring Chris Pine & Zachary Quinto & Eric Baba & Karl Urban & Simon Pegg & John Cho & Anton Yelchin & Zoe Saldana et al, director J J Abrams, McCoy to Kirk
In your face from outer space. Logo of division of US Space Command
US Space Command dominating the Space dimension of American Operations to protect US interests and investments. Vision for 2020, published in February 2007 US Space Command mission statement
The globalisation of the world economy will continue with the widening of the haves and the have-nots. ibid.
The power to deny others the use of space. ibid.
‘The Space Race wasn’t just about space, it was about our own sense of security.’ The Sixties: The Space Race, Andrew Chaikin, author A Man on the Moon, Yesterday 2014
‘I feel like a million dollars.’ ibid. Ed White’s spacewalk Gemini 4
Observe ye everything that takes place in the heaven, how they do not change their orbits, and the luminaries which are in the heaven, how they all rise and set in order each in its season. Enoch Book 1:2:1
I saw there seven stars like great burning mountains,
and to me, when I inquired regarding them, The angel said: This place is the end of heaven and earth: this has become a prison for the stars and the host of heaven. And the stars which roll over the fire are they which have transgressed the commandment of the Lord in the beginning of their rising, because they did not come forth at their appointed times. And He was wroth with them, and bound them till the time when their guilt should be consummated (even) for ten thousand years. Enoch 1:18:13-16