The first colony on Mars is not going to be built by a private company. How are you going to make money? You're not.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the establishment of the first colony on Mars will not be primarily driven by profit motives.
In this quote, Neil Degrasse Tyson emphasizes that the endeavor to build a colony on Mars transcends traditional economic motivations. It highlights the importance of exploration and human progress over monetary gain, indicating that such monumental projects require a vision that prioritizes scientific curiosity and human advancement rather than financial profits.
In practice
In a speech about human exploration, you might quote this to inspire people to think beyond profit.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
The press still thinks [global warming] is controversial. So they find the 1% of the scientists and put them up as if they're 50% of the research results. You in the public would have no idea that this is basically a done deal and that we're on to other problems, because the journalists are trying to give it a 50/50 story. It's not a 50/50 story. It's not. Period.
As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.
In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined.
One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.
Lots of people think, well, we're humans; we're the most intelligent and accomplished species; we're in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.
I don't believe in technological determinism, especially not in biology and medicine. We have strong laws to keep doctors from monkeying around with humans that will remain in place. It's simply not true that everything that is technologically possible gets done.
If you represent the Earth's lifetime by a single year, say from January when it was made to December, the 21st-century would be a quarter of a second in June - a tiny fraction of the year. But even in this concertinaed cosmic perspective, our century is very, very special: the first when humans can change themselves and their home planet.
It was like a new world opened to me, the world of science, which I was at last permitted to know in all liberty.
It takes sixty-five thousand errors before you are qualified to make a rocket.
We went to the Moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.
That's one of the ironies of our time: Right when we're on the edge of serious improvements in health care, we're also cooking the planet.
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