Hi, I'm Carl Sagan. This is a place where
I often work in Ithaca New York near
Cornell University. Maybe you can hear in
the background a 200-foot waterfall
which is probably, I guess, a rarity on Mars.
I don't know why you're on Mars.
Maybe you're there because we've
recognized we have to carefully move small asteroids around to avert the
possibility of one impacting the earth
with catastrophic consequences and while
we're up in near-earth space it's only a
hop skip and a jump to Mars.
Maybe we're on Mars because
we recognize that if there are human
communities on many worlds the chances of us being rendered extinct by some
catastrophe on one world is much less.
Or maybe we're on Mars because we have
to be. Because there is a deep nomadic
impulse built into us by the
evolutionary process. We come, after all,
from hunter-gatherers and through 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we've been
wanderers and the next place to wander
to is Mars.
But whatever the reason you're on Mars
is, I'm glad you're there.
And I wish I was with you.
