Is it possible to keep a culture vital and vibrant enough to want to conduct these projects, and still be able to systematically marshall and deploy the enormous resources needed to carry them out?

This is a question that is difficult to answer. We are moving into areas of human cultural evolution that we've never been in before. The rate of change today is unprecedented in human history, and we're on unmarked territory. Is the rapid technological development compatible with safety and stability? If we put the brakes on, do we risk losing our edge? If we don't, do we risk uncontrollable chaos? Will our newer generations adapt successfully? Or not?

It does not take immense statist institutions to carry out great projects, or do long-range planning. We're seeing a comparison now of NASA's approach to space development versus the smaller, private approach. We have yet to see the results, but I'm personally betting on the mammals over the dinosaurs.

Raymond Passworthy: Oh, God, is there ever to be any age of happiness? Is there never to be any rest?

Oswald Cabal: Rest enough for the individual man - too much, and too soon - and we call it death. But for Man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet with its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.

Raymond Passworthy: But... we're such little creatures. Poor humanity's so fragile, so weak. Little... little animals.

Oswald Cabal: Little animals. If we're no more than animals, we must snatch each little scrap of happiness and live and suffer and pass, mattering no more than all the other animals do or have done.

Is it this? Or that? All the universe? Or nothingness? Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?

--"Things to Come," the movie, by H. G. Wells