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" If governments decide to return to the Moon - as seems to be the case - it must be to build villages, not bases, and to do it as rapidly as possible, as it needs to be an immediate challenge, not a distant dream. And if some want to go to Mars or mine asteroids, they need to be seen as part of a new frontier community. "

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" It is time to declare that the goal of the United States in space is the settlement of the solar system, from low Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars. "

Rick Tumlinson

Earth

Time

Goal

" It was the summer of 1968 or so, and Dad and my little brother were out camping. While up in the mountains, my brother was bitten by a rattlesnake. As they raced back to the base, my dad sucked out the venom and used his hands as a tourniquet and probably save his life, for it was a serious bite, and he was just a little kid. "

" I've been doing a few interviews since the loss of the SpaceX Dragon on its way to the Space Station. Each one very quickly questions the viability of what they call commercial space in light of the failure. I tell them space is hard: this is what happens early in a program with new technology. "

" Your birthday happens each year on exactly the same day. It is a solid thing, a dependable thing, a measure of your life broken down into 365 subunits. For a Leaper, it is a bit different. For us, the basic assumption is shattered from the beginning. "

" Vets are different than other people. Frontline or support, they carry themselves differently than the rest of us. It is as if they entered the service as one person and came out another, and that is the person who they are the rest of their lives. "

" It was Apollo 8 that first showed us the tiny blue marble of Earth floating in the void of space, one of the great psychological shifts in human history. From out there, we can both appreciate and begin to solve the problems of our world in ways unavailable to us otherwise. "

" We need to open the frontier between the Earth and Moon to large-scale human activities, we need to establish human outposts and communities off the Earth and begin the job of doing so right away - and do so largely based on letting the people take over most of the jobs. "

" We go as humans into space to expand the domain of humanity and life - not robots. And as we do, we will get more science because when you are living somewhere, you obviously learn more about it. NASA and the government must first get out of the way and then support us as we open the frontier. "

" Robotics, manufacturing, medicine, farming, energy - all will be pushed to and beyond their limits and, by so doing, will advance at speeds far faster than without the impetus and challenge of opening a frontier - thus also raising the odds of survival in our favor. "

" We have an industrial base - one that, if made to take orders rather than being allowed in the vacuum of leadership to create them, if enabled by the elimination of cost-plus contracting to produce and achieve rather than waste and receive, could make something worth the cost rather than making work that costs us our dreams. "

" It is time to take a stand for the future. Not in just words but actions. It is time to step up and demand the Vision. For by its realization, we all will win, and I mean us all. "

" Go out tonight and look at the stars. And allow yourself to dream. "

Rick Tumlinson

Yourself

Dream

" Like most Americans, I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I am pro-future, pro-hope, and pro-abundance. I am pro-frontier and will talk to and work with anyone else who shares my belief that it is our goal and destiny to expand life and civilization into space. "

" Space is a laboratory, an experiment in all forms of all things, an infinity of possibilities, properties, and places that cry out for investigation and exploration. "

" NewSpace, commercial space - whatever you want to call it - is rising, with or without government support. It is rising in West Texas and on the Gulf Coast, in California and on the Virginia coast, and rising from the ashes of the old space program in Florida and in small shops and university labs in a hundred places in between. "

" We should stop wasting taxpayer funds on ridiculously expensive government missions to nowhere that return little value and blaze no useful trail for others to follow. Of course we should spend much more on science - and yes, use robots to do that science when it makes sense. "

" We cannot wait for the next Kennedy to set us on our path to the stars. "

Rick Tumlinson

Wait

Stars

" Crazy may not be the one who says the sun is the center of the solar system, the Earth is round, and someday people might fly. It may be those who laugh at such words whose minds are lost. "

" When good people do bad things, it is sad, but when they reach the point where one can predict that they will do nothing but bad things, a deeper kind of sadness sets in, almost at the level of resignation. "

" Trust in our economic system and the genius and hard work of our citizens beyond the mandate and control of government. "

" From John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, presidents have rhetorically opened the door to the frontier for us, and each time, we have turned away to fight over destinations, technologies, and timing. "

" We have a space agency desperately in need of purpose, whose employees and capabilities have been wasted for decades on make-work projects and dead-end PowerPoint pioneering placebos designed to do nothing more than keep the billing high. "

" China, Russia and India are shooting for the Moon. United Arab Emirates says Mars. Other private citizens and companies are heading either to Mars, asteroids, or the Moon. "

" The Moon! Mars! Asteroids! Rockets! Helium 3! Space solar power! Space tourism! We go through fads, swarm around the hero de jour, and spend far too much time trashing the other guy's ideas in favor of our own. "

" By opening space, for the first time in our history, rather than inexorably extracting the blood of life from this oh-so-precious sphere in our quest for wealth, we will turn outwards and upwards, creating new wealth from places already dead, advancing into places where there is no life, and bringing its seeds with us. "

" The opening of space to human development and settlement is the most important activity of the human species. From hope to health, from wonder to wealth, the environment, and the very act of living, space is the future. "

" We need Big Ideas, as we are in a time of small people, and as Kennedy showed with Apollo, doing something grand in space is the biggest. At a time of huge national doubt and fear of losing our leadership as a nation to others, it focused us, gave us something positive and inspired a generation. "

" 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 require, as a species, the difference between what is safe and unsafe to define ourselves. Be it in darkness or in light, where we are means nothing without the comparison to the other place - where we are not. And thus it is the difference between them that tells us who and what we are. "

" Life comes forth for no other reason than to be and make more life. It will fight and crawl and do anything in its power to live, and once alive, it will stand against all to remain alive. Its existence is its own argument. "