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" I think Pluto has to be considered among the places in the solar system that are possible homes for life. "

David Grinspoon

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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. "

David Grinspoon

" When I first went to college, I went into physics, and my goal was to help perfect nuclear fusion so I could solve the energy crisis and global warming. I probably would have done it, too, if I'd stuck to it. "

David Grinspoon

" A lot of the science fiction that I grew up reading was written when we still thought that Venus might be an oceanic planet. "

David Grinspoon

" The mature Anthropocene begins when we acquire the ability to live sustainably and become a lasting presence on this world. "

David Grinspoon

" Earth is a stunningly lovely planet for so many reasons. Among these is the wondrous presence of curious, artful, inventive humanity. "

David Grinspoon

" I think the best SF writers are very aware of what we, in the scientific community, are doing, thinking, and discovering. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" I will defend the NASA Earth Science Division with everything I've got. "

David Grinspoon

" We don't know that Venus had oceans, but there's every reason to believe it did. "

David Grinspoon

" Humanity has at least a dim, and growing, cognisance of the effects of its presence on this planet. The possibility that we might integrate that awareness into how we interface with the Earth system is one that should give us hope. "

David Grinspoon

" The reason you see so many volcanoes on Venus is partly due to the fact that there's virtually no erosion there. So on Venus, you're seeing features, some of which are hundreds of millions of years old on the surface. On Earth, we do not see any surface features nearly that old - you only see much more recent features. "

David Grinspoon

" It will be a long time, if ever, before we get to study Earth-like planets orbiting around other stars, so really, the study of Venus and Mars is the best opportunity that we have, and can imagine having anytime in the future, to understand the evolution of Earth-like planets. "

David Grinspoon

" We're going to stop looking at Earth from orbit because we don't like what we are seeing and the conclusions that leads us to? That's nonsense. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" We definitely don't want to go through another Ice Age or another natural cycle of global warming. Both happen over a long period of time. It would be disastrous for our civilization, and not just for us but many other species. "

David Grinspoon

" The basic ability to not wipe oneself out, to endure, to use your technological interaction with the world in such a way that has the possibility of the likelihood of lasting and not being temporary - that seems like a pretty good definition of intelligence. "

David Grinspoon

" Humans are possessed, to some degree, with the power of foresight. Yet we so often learn things the hard way, through disaster. "

David Grinspoon

" We're pretty sure there's plenty of organic material on Pluto. The atmosphere is largely methane, and in sunlight, methane builds organic molecules. We see reddish stuff on the surface that we think is organic material. "

David Grinspoon

" It's OK to pursue speculative ideas because we don't want to be too cozy and safe and assume that we know everything about life in the universe. However, we have to be rigorous and careful and honest and logical and scientifically meticulous when we speculate. "

David Grinspoon

" 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. "

David Grinspoon

" The story of our species is one of overcoming existential risk through new forms of cooperation and innovation. "

David Grinspoon

" You cannot study other planets without referring to Earth and without applying the techniques and the insights of Earth science. And you cannot really do a good job understanding the Earth without the insights from planetary exploration. "

David Grinspoon

" My high-school friends and I felt part of a community of smart, forward-looking space and technology freaks. "

David Grinspoon

" We have all this very clever technology and all these abilities to manipulate the world in all these ways, yet we are faced with the very real question of whether we can be sustainable on this planet - whether or not, in fact, we can endure. "

David Grinspoon

" Fixing global warming is more important than astronomy. "

David Grinspoon

" Among the plausible niches for extraterrestrial life in our solar system, the clouds of Venus are among the most accessible and the least well explained. "

David Grinspoon

" I intend to apply the perspective of astrobiology, which is a deep-time way of looking at life on Earth, towards the question of the Anthropocene. What does the human phenomenon on Earth look like viewed from an interplanetary perspective? "

David Grinspoon

" It is said that Mahatma Gandhi, when asked about Western civilization, remarked, 'I think it would be a good idea.' That's how I feel about intelligent life on Earth, especially when I think about the question of what truly intelligent life might look like elsewhere in the universe. "

David Grinspoon