Wernher von Braun — "My mind is completely open. I don't know if there is life on other planets, but …"
My mind is completely open. I don't know if there is life on other planets, but I think it's likely.
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More from Wernher von Braun
"To achieve the impossible, you must first believe it is possible."
"Man is the first animal clever enough to build his own extinction machine."
"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing."
"I'm a rocket man, not a religious man."
"My conscience is clear. I only ever wanted to go to the moon."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
The speaker admits genuine uncertainty about extraterrestrial life while leaning toward probability over denial. Rather than claiming definitive knowledge, they hold intellectual humility alongside reasoned optimism — acknowledging the vast scale of the universe makes life elsewhere statistically plausible. It's a scientist's position: evidence-informed openness rather than dogma in either direction.
Relevance to Wernher von Braun
Von Braun spent his career making space accessible, developing the Saturn V rocket that carried humans to the Moon. Having dedicated his life to reaching beyond Earth, speculation about life elsewhere was natural territory. His openness reflects a pragmatic engineering mindset — don't assert what you cannot prove, but reason from what you know about cosmic scale.
The era
Von Braun worked through the 1950s–70s Space Race, when humanity first left Earth's atmosphere and walked on the Moon. Radio telescope projects like SETI launched in 1960, and scientists seriously debated the Drake Equation. The question of alien life shifted from science fiction to legitimate scientific inquiry precisely during the era von Braun helped define.
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