Our Future: Will it be a Space Age or a Stone Age?

"To think that we could stop growing could be compared to an imaginary embryo that is in its sixth or seventh month and has decided to stop growing in order to survive in the womb. The womb is the only environment it has known; all others are feared out of ignorance. Assume, however, that the embryo is very intelligent. It has kept records since the third or fourth month. It extrapolates from its statistical data to the eighth or ninth month. It sees environmental conditions in the womb growing precarious going into the tenth and eleventh months. It decides this growth is impossible, so that it had better stop growing in the fifth or sixth month before a catastrophe occurs. What it doesn't know is that in the ninth month a change will take place.... 'Mother' Earth and her latest children, humanity, are at that same point now. Our new frame of reference will be the environmental enlargement beyond Earth. Now that we possess the necessary technology, we can 'breathe' and live beyond Earth, outside the womb of the biosphere in which we grew up."

Krafft Ehricke, "The Extraterrestrial Imperative" in Update on Space Vol. I, 1981

Space Quotes to Ponder