If you're going to lead a space frontier, it has to be government; it'll never be private enterprise. Because the space frontier is dangerous, and it's expensive, and it has unquantified risks.
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And under those conditions, you cannot establish a capital-market evaluation of that enterprise. You can't get investors.
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When you put money directly to a problem, it makes a good headline.
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When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence.