Alastair Reynolds Quotes

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

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.

In the long term, it is desirable that the human race, faced with the prospect of extinction on Earth, should prepare an escape route for itself to another inhabitable planet.

If we're going to have any chance of sending stuff to other star systems, we need to be laser-focused on becoming a multi-planet civilisation.

It's feasible that we'll meet other sentient life forms and conduct commerce with them. We don't now have the technology to physically travel outside our solar system for such an exchange to take place, but we are like Columbus centuries ago, learning fast how to get somewhere few think possible.

From my perspective, it's really risk management to ensure that humans have the ability to go somewhere else in case there were to be some huge disaster on Earth.

I firmly believe in what Stephen Hawking says - that if we don't get off this planet, we're going to go berserk. We have to have more space.

It's very exciting that people could actually live on another planet.

I believe that the only way that the human race is gonna survive is to start colonizing space and setting up colonies on the moon, and then space stations.

We've gotta become the Martians. I'm a Martian - I tell you to become Martians. And we've gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.

By the time I'm 40, interplanetary travel will be common. Nobody will want to talk to me at that age, anyway.

We are not learning to view ourselves as an advanced, evolving civilization. That is what we really must learn to do, in due course, if we were to survive. All of that will take place, in due course, and we will be able to explore solar system. We will be able to go beyond it, provided we get our act together and learn to live as a civilization.

Some day we'll move into space and start ensuring the survival of our species beyond Earth, whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand.

Earth is the nest, the cradle, and we'll move out of it.

I believe, I truly believe, that humans will be living off of this planet, at some point in the future. It's inevitable for us, and it seems like a reasonable and realistic progression for us as a human race. We won't last on this planet - not forever.

The reality is the majority of us will not get off this planet. So the long run is, some kind of space exploration has to benefit us here on Earth.

Once we become a multiplanet species, our chances to live long and prosper will take a huge leap skyward.

To establish human settlements on the Moon, Mars, or in the free-space between, humans will have to again rapidly adapt. Like early pioneers, there will be no nearby friendly merchants or supportive governments to replace that broken tool.

We need to move off the planet. And Mars is the next best place.

So we say, oh, my goodness; we think we've found another Earth-like planet. We will start trying to figure out how to get there. And I have this strong belief that whatever we think we can do, whatever we can dream, we can do.

We must become a space-faring nation.

Going underground is no answer. What kind of world would they come up to? What would they use for air? What would they use for food? ... What would they use for people?

Man will not always stay on Earth; the pursuit of light and space will lead him to penetrate the bounds of the atmosphere, timidly at first, but in the end to conquer the whole of solar space.

The more we know about life out there the easier it will be to improve life down here.

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.