"We need a space program because we need explorers. Its in our souls"
About this Quote
Bernsen’s line lands less like policy and more like a casting call for the national imagination. As an actor, he’s not arguing budgets or engineering tradeoffs; he’s pitching a story Americans already know how to watch themselves in: the frontier narrative, updated from covered wagons to capsules. “We need” repeats like a drumbeat, turning a discretionary government project into a psychological necessity. The logic isn’t technical, it’s character-driven: a people with a certain self-image must act in accordance with it, or risk becoming someone else.
The key move is the jump from “space program” (institution, money, bureaucracy) to “explorers” (romance, courage, individuality). That substitution swaps NASA’s messy realities for a cleaner archetype. “Its in our souls” raises the stakes even higher, claiming exploration as instinct rather than choice. That’s persuasive because it bypasses the usual objections - cost, risk, relevance - and relocates the debate to identity. If exploration is “in our souls,” opposition starts to look like a kind of spiritual betrayal.
There’s subtext, too, about cultural drift. In eras when the U.S. feels cautious, gridlocked, or inward-looking, space becomes a symbolic escape hatch: a place where competence, daring, and collective purpose still seem possible. The line also flattens history - who gets to be an “explorer,” what exploration has meant to those being explored - but that simplification is part of its power. It sells longing, not logistics, and it’s effective because longing travels faster than rockets.
The key move is the jump from “space program” (institution, money, bureaucracy) to “explorers” (romance, courage, individuality). That substitution swaps NASA’s messy realities for a cleaner archetype. “Its in our souls” raises the stakes even higher, claiming exploration as instinct rather than choice. That’s persuasive because it bypasses the usual objections - cost, risk, relevance - and relocates the debate to identity. If exploration is “in our souls,” opposition starts to look like a kind of spiritual betrayal.
There’s subtext, too, about cultural drift. In eras when the U.S. feels cautious, gridlocked, or inward-looking, space becomes a symbolic escape hatch: a place where competence, daring, and collective purpose still seem possible. The line also flattens history - who gets to be an “explorer,” what exploration has meant to those being explored - but that simplification is part of its power. It sells longing, not logistics, and it’s effective because longing travels faster than rockets.
Quote Details
| Topic | Adventure |
|---|
More Quotes by Corbin
Add to List
