And so, I was not a military test pilot, but as soon as NASA expressed an interest in flying scientists and people who were not military test pilots, that was an epiphany that just came like a stroke of lightning.

The statistics of life out there and the statistics of intelligent beings and advanced civilization is a certainty, the way I look at it. that It has not been accepted, because we've been in an anthropocentric era.

I’m such a long-term investor, I’ve never really let go and celebrated what I did with the Hubble telescope.

Statistically it’s a certainty there are hugely advanced civilizations, intelligences, life forms out there. I believe they’re so advanced they’re even doing interstellar travel. I believe it’s possible they even came here.

Most of our history in space has been communicated in terms of action – what people do, a chronological list of events which have transpired – as opposed to the human experience of having done those things.

There really isn’t a time to pause and have a celebration. I feel so serious about the whole thing.

The statistics of life out there and the statistics of intelligent beings and advanced civilization is a certainty, the way I look at it. It has not been accepted, because we’ve been in an anthropocentric era.

Hubble touches people. When you’re looking that far out, you’re giving people their place in the universe, it touches people. Science is often visual, so it doesn’t need translation. It’s like poetry, it touches you.

Poetry is its own medium; it’s very different than writing prose. Poetry can talk in an imagistic sense, it has particular ways of catching an environment.

It is humanity’s destiny to explore the universe. When we start thinking and working on that cosmic level, we will transcend our parochial differences and tribal natures and become global creatures, solar system creatures. Then we will figure out where we fit in.