Science & Tech Quote by Jack Schmitt

Schmitt’s line sounds like futurism with its feet planted firmly in logistics. Coming from the last man to walk on the Moon, it’s less a starry-eyed pitch than a veteran’s insistence on infrastructure. The “there” is doing a lot of work: it’s shorthand for the big, hazy promises of deep-space exploration and settlement that politicians love to evoke and rarely fund. Schmitt punctures that abstraction by tying destiny to supply chains.

The specific intent is strategic: make the Moon the proving ground. “Go back” is a rebuke to decades of rhetorical ambition unaccompanied by repetition. Apollo was a sprint; Schmitt is arguing for a ladder. “Develop a technology base” signals permanence, not flags-and-footprints prestige. He’s talking about the unglamorous stack - life support that can run for years, radiation protection, maintenance culture, reliable propulsion, closed-loop systems, and the ability to move people and materials routinely. “Living and working and transporting ourselves” reads like a checklist of capabilities, a reminder that space isn’t a destination so much as an operating environment.

The subtext is political economy. Schmitt is implicitly critiquing the idea that you can leap to Mars on inspiration alone; without a cis-lunar industrial and operational rhythm, exploration remains episodic, brittle, and easy to cancel. In context, it’s also a generational message: the Moon isn’t a nostalgia project, it’s the nearest place to build competence - to turn spaceflight from heroic exception into sustained practice.