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Some day we'll move into space and start ensuring the survival of our species beyond Earth, whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand.

With every inch of land on Earth now catalogued by our satellites, the stars are the next place we as a species must travel. And with a booming world population that will hit 9.1 billion in 2050, large-scale space travel may become a necessity.

It's not going to be just humans colonizing space, it's going to be life moving out from the Earth, moving it into its kingdom. And the kingdom of life, of course, is going to be the universe.

What is our destiny? Does it matter? Is it bound up with 'our' planet? In my opinion, yes.

It's our destiny to explore. It's our destiny to be a space-faring nation.

Years of science fiction have produced a mindset that it is human destiny to expand from Earth, to the Moon, to Mars, to the stars.

I certainly don't think I'm deserving of taking up space forever as a human. There's a whole generation of people yet to be born that are going to be so much more evolved than I am. I don't want to take up space. They're going to be better equipped to make the world a better place than I am.

Space is as infinite as we can imagine, and expanding this perspective is what adjusts humankind focus on conquering our true enemies, the formidable foes: ignorance and limitation.

Man must be in space - that is what we are destined for. There is nothing else that we can do.

If you want a nation to have space exploration ambitions, you've got to send humans.