The solar system should be viewed as our backyard, not as some sequence of destinations that we do one at a time.
Interpretation
The solar system should be seen as an interconnected whole rather than isolated parts to visit.
Neil Degrasse Tyson emphasizes the importance of viewing the solar system as a cohesive entity, suggesting that it is our home rather than a collection of distant worlds. This perspective encourages us to appreciate the interconnectedness of celestial bodies and our relationship with them, fostering a sense of responsibility towards exploration and stewardship of our cosmic environment.
In practice
In discussions about space exploration and colonization, this quote can remind us of our integral place in the universe.
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.
Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper
If penicillin had been judged by its toxicity to guinea pigs, it might never have been used by man.
You'll often hear the phrase "science doesn't know everything." Well, of course it doesn't know everything. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean that it knows nothing.
The word 'chance' then expresses only our ignorance of the causes of the phenomena that we observe to occur and to succeed one another in no apparent order. Probability is relative in part to this ignorance, and in part to our knowledge.
The solution of the difficulty is that the two mental pictures which experiment lead us to form - the one of the particles, the other of the waves - are both incomplete and have only the validity of analogies which are accurate only in limiting cases.
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