A Quote by Martin Rees

The images of Earth's delicate biosphere, contrasting with the sterile moonscape where the astronauts left their footsteps, have become iconic for environmentalists: these may indeed be the Apollo programme's most enduring legacy.

Martin Rees

Quote Topics

Space Apollo Astronauts Become Biosphere Contrasting Delicate Earth Enduring Environmentalists Footsteps Iconic Images Indeed Left Legacy May Most Programme Sterile

Quote Author

Martin Rees
British - Scientist
Born: June 23, 1942

If the human species, or indeed any part of the biosphere, is to continue to survive, it must eventually leave the Earth and colonize space. For the simple fact of the matter is, the planet Earth is doomed... Let us follow many environmentalists and regard the Earth as Gaia, the mother of all life (which indeed she is). Gaia, like all mothers, is not immortal. She is going to die. But her line of descent might be immortal. . . . Gaia's children might never die out-provided they move into space. The Earth should be regarded as the womb of life-but one cannot remain in the womb forever.

Frank J. Tipler

Speaking of photography, while the Apollo 8 crew shot hundreds of photos, there was one that got everybody's attention: a blue-and-white Earth rising over a gray moonscape.

Henry Spencer

Ever since the environmental movement was sparked by photos of the whole Earth taken by astronauts onboard Apollo Lunar Modules, I've seen planetary exploration as an extension of a reverence and care for Earth.

David Grinspoon

Love leaves legacy. How you treated other people, not your wealth or accomplishments, is the most enduring impact you can leave on earth.

Rick Warren

We need a change in consciousness to go with this technology platform. We need a new narrative: we need to shift from geopolitics to biosphere consciousness in one generation. The biosphere is understood here as what goes from the biosphere to the depths of the ocean 40 miles where all living beings interact with all chemicals to create a very complex choreography that we call "life on earth". That is biosphere that is our indivisible community.

Jeremy Rifkin

The radiations that pour upon the earth cause the biosphere to take on properties unknown to lifeless planetary surfaces, and thus transform the face of the earth. Activated by radiation, the matter of the biosphere collects and redistributes solar energy, and converts it ultimately into free energy capable of doing work on earth.

Vladimir Vernadsky

Manned spaceflight has lost its glamour - understandably so, because it hardly seems inspiring, 40 years after Apollo, for astronauts merely to circle the Earth in the space shuttle and the International Space Station.

Martin Rees

The people of Shishmaref want their community to survive, but they are holding on to their legacy by a very delicate thread indeed. The threat of their land disappearing is only the beginning.

Amy J. Berg

Apollo 8 comes a close second, it not equal, to Apollo 11 for the most exciting, memorable moments on the Apollo project.

Margaret H. Hamilton

If anything, Calvin Klein is the iconic company in terms of fashion. They do have iconic images for their campaigns.

Djimon Hounsou

The view of earth is spectacular from space. Most people imagine that when astronauts look out the window of the shuttle they see the whole earth like that big blue marble that was made famous by the flights that went to the moon. But the shuttle is much, much closer than those astronauts were. So we don't see the whole planet, the whole ball at once, we just see parts of it.

Sally Ride

In less than 70 hours, three astronauts will be launched on the flight of Apollo 8 from the Cape Kennedy Space Center on a research journey to circle the moon. This will involve known risks of great magnitude and probable risks which have not been foreseen. Apollo 8 has 5,600,000 parts and 1.5 million systems, subsystems and assemblies. With 99.9 percent reliability, we could expect 5,600 defects. Hence the striving for perfection and the use of redundancy which characterize the Apollo program.

Jerome F. Lederer

When I circled the moon and looked back at Earth, my outlook on life and my viewpoint of Earth changed... Earth is a spaceship, just like Apollo - and just like Apollo, the crew must learn to live and work together. We must learn to manage the resources of this world with new imagination.

Jim Lovell

If you look at the greatest models, it was because they were muses to photographers. They collaborated with the artist and they created the kind of images that become iconic.

Michael Flutie

Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people`s plates.