The Choice Is Ours

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[Larry King, host] Alright, let's explore

the thinking of Jacque Fresco

and the society that he'd like to see.

(Jacque Fresco) The reason

we emphasize machines and technology

is to free man

to pursue the higher things.

Machines ought to do the filthy,

repetitious, or the boring jobs.

It would take ten years

to change the surface of the Earth.

To save our environment,

[considering] our stupidity, our conflict,

we've got to reorganize our way of thinking

and reconsider our social aims.

We must put our mind to this

as we do to put a man on the moon.

[Jeff Hoffman, retired NASA astronaut]

Like many kids, when I was 6 years old

I dreamed of flying in space.

I'm old enough that,

back then, the only astronauts were

Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

I went on and became a professional astronomer.

I was lucky enough to get selected

in the first group of shuttle astronauts.

We trained for a long time.

Of course, you go through

many different types of simulators.

But when you're actually

sitting up there on the rocket,

you realize that "Hey, this is not the simulator!"

The whole vehicle is

shaking a little bit on the pad.

Then, you hear this roar down beneath you.

The whole shuttle tilts forward a little bit.

Then, as it comes back to the vertical position,

all of a sudden,

Wham! The solid boosters ignite.

There's an incredible vibration and noise.

For the next two minutes,

there is just so much power

that you're sitting on top of.

I was just holding on, thinking to myself

"Whoa! I hope this whole thing holds together."

Sure enough, it did.

By that time, we're looking out the window.

The blue sky has already

turned to the blackness of space.

And I can see in the distance

the coast of Africa coming up into view.

I always remember that feeling

on my first flight when I realized:

Wow, you're in space!

You see from orbit the sunrises and sunsets

16 times every 24 hours.

Flying over the Earth at night, in particular

gives you a real sense of human civilization.

During the day, you look down

and you see the colors of the Earth.

You see the forms of the landmass,

of the continents.

There's a lot of beautiful things

to see during the day.

There's also the view of the impact

that humans have had on our planet,

and that can be pretty scary.

Over the course of 11 years of flying

I watched as the Amazon jungle

was continually being deforested.

[Rondnia, Brazil 2010

24 years of deforestation]

At night, you'd constantly see agricultural burning

all over the world.

You could see harbors being silted up.

You could see, in Africa,

how the tree line would go up every year.

We know about global warming

and what we're doing to the atmosphere.

That's the other thing

you really get a sense of from space

is how thin our atmosphere is.

Basically, the idea that

we're seeing this environmental damage

on the Earth, created by humans,

but we see it from a cosmic perspective,

means that it's just

not something that we can ignore.

The planet is responding

to the presence of humanity.

[Carl Sagan, "Pale Blue Dot", 1994]

The Earth is a very small stage

in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the rivers of blood

spilled by all those generals and emperors

so that in glory and triumph

they can become the momentary masters

of a fraction of a dot.

[Earth from 3.7 billion miles]

Think of the endless cruelties visited

by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel

on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants

of some other corner.

How eager they are to kill one another,

how fervent their hatreds.

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