“We hesitate about where to go from here in space. Yet our delay in exploiting this window of opportunity could close off choices for our descendants if the no-growth paradigm–or a failure of nerve–should come to dominate the industrial nations… Because of our technologies, and the scales of our political and economic organizations, we now have the option of taking a conscious evolutionary step, expanding the presence and influence of humanity beyond the biosphere that evolved us–and possibly beyond the limits that otherwise would constrain our future… Our generation is the first to have this choice. It may be up to us to prove that intelligence armed with technology has long-term survival value.”
— Michael Michaud in Life in the Universe (AAAS Selected Symposium 31, 1979). Found in the online repository Space Quotes to Ponder.
