Five centuries from now - barring unimaginable catastrophe - the moon will be developed real estate. There's economic incentive to exploit the moon - the helium-3 will be useful in powering fusion reactors, and the rare earth elements could supplant the limited terrestrial supply of these materials.
Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
When I was 7 years old, I announced that I was going to write a book about pollution. I didn't get around to it until I was 29, but I always recognized that pollution was a theft. That it was a way of stealing something from the public - the common earth.
I've been collecting articles on extremophile bacteria for at least the last ten years. I find them fascinating, whether they live in boiling pools at Yellowstone, around thermal vents at the floors of the oceans, or on Mars, where NASA has been searching for them as the first evidence of life beyond Earth.
O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
Thou art not for the earth, nor for the Heaven the world is for thee, thou art not for the world.
What's a space elevator? Simply described, it's a thin ribbon, about 3 feet wide and 60 thousand miles long, stretching upwards from the surface of the Earth. The lower end is bolted to a heavy anchor (think of an oil drilling platform), and the top is capped with a counterweight.
I could put my thumb up to a window and completely hide the Earth. I thought, 'Everything I've ever known is behind my thumb.'
My hand landed on a rock, and the gnome landed on it, squashing my thumb between the rock and the gnome. Basically, it was crushed and took the end of my thumb off. I just looked at my hand, and the first thought that flashed into my mind was, 'How on earth am I going to make my devil horn sign now? That's my trademark!'
Spring, when the earth tilts closer to the sun, runs a strict timetable of flowers.
In a few generations more, there will probably be no room at all allowed for animals on the earth: no need of them, no toleration of them.
I remember when Tony Blair came into office, and there was a sense I was thinking, 'Well, what on Earth am I going to do now?' until I realized that's exactly what he was thinking.
A black hole really is an object with very rich structure, just like Earth has a rich structure of mountains, valleys, oceans, and so forth. Its warped space whirls around the central singularity like air in a tornado.
As far as I can tell, the only unambiguous consequence of the claimed invasion of Earth by beings from another star system has been a nonstop torrent of TV specials. So if you're one of the many who believe the aliens are here, you really do have to admit this: They're the best houseguests ever.
Whether Earth was deliberately terraformed, in other words, or whether it was seeded with the spores of life from crashed comets or whether, indeed, life arose here spontaneously and accidentally, it is reasonable to hope that we might find traces of the same kind of process on Mars.
God is not glorified in any transaction upon earth so much as in the conversion of a sinner.
There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.
Less than an hour before he'd congratulated himself on escaping all the traps of Earth, all the snares of Man. Not knowing that the greatest trap of all, the final and the fatal trap, lay on this present planet.
My dad took me to my first movie. It was 'The Greatest Show on Earth' in 1952, a movie of such scale it was actually a traumatic experience.
My favourite places on earth are the wild waterways where the forest opens its arms and a silver curve of river folds the traveller into its embrace.
