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"We exist to make the capability of human travel beyond our solar system a reality within the next 100 years. We unreservedly dedicate ourselves to identifying and pushing the radical leaps in knowledge and technology needed to achieve interstellar flight, while pioneering and transforming breakthrough applications that enhance the quality of life for all on Earth. We actively seek to include the broadest swath of people and human experience in understanding, shaping and implementing this global aspiration. Taking up this task ignites not only our imagination, but the undeniable human need to push ourselves to accomplishments greater than any single individual."

"As a life support engineer at NASA Ames Research Center, it's Michael Flynn's job to keep astronauts alive in space, making sure they have the basic necessities like clean water to survive. But launching clean water into space is cost-prohibitive, so for years, Flynn and his team have been working on new ways to recycle waste water into safe, drinking water. SmartPlanet visits Flynn's lab and looks at how he's doing it through a process known as "forward osmosis.""

The space program was forged from paranoia and fear. Our first rockets were weapons. Our first moves into the world beyond our own were motivated by competition. But when we finally got ourselves into space -- when we first traveled around our lonely planet, and took our first bounding leaps on the moon -- many of those baser motivations transformed into something more transcendent and profound: Space came to mean something much more than ideology. Space ended up teaching us about life on Earth.