When you are next out of doors on a summer night, turn your head towards the zenith. Almost vertically above you will be shining the brightest star of the northern skies - Vega of the Lyre, twenty-six years away at the speed of light, near enough to the point of no return for us short-lived creatures. Past this blue-white beacon, fifty times as brilliant as our sun, we may send our minds and bodies, but never our hearts. For no man will ever turn homewards beyond Vega, to greet again those he knew and loved on Earth.

Space can be mapped and crossed and occupied without definable limit; but it can never be conquered. When our race has reached its ultimate achievements, and t…

We seldom stop to think that we are still creatures of the sea, able to leave it only because, from birth to death, we wear the water-filled space suits of our…

To obtain a mental picture of the distance to the nearest star, compared to the nearest planet, you must imagine a world in which the closest object to you is …

I got a woman way over town, That's good to me, Oh yeah!

I leaned right over to kiss your stoney book A little jealous of the ships with whom you flirt A billion lovers with their cameras Snap to look and in my fanta…

She shone for me like the Evening Star. I loved her dearly - but at a distance.