“Human beings are a curious, inquisitive, exploratory species. I think that has been the secret of our success as a species.”

Those are the words of the great Carl Sagan from his last lecture in 1977 at The Royal Institution’s famed Christmas Lectures. He was talking about mankind’s foray into space, and this wonderfully pieced together video, with animation from Andrew Khosravani and music from Johnny Ripper, is a look at what it means for our species to travel from our earthly home into the great unknown.

“At just this moment, these spacecraft permit us, in a halting, tentative, preliminary way, to leave the earth and examine our surroundings in space,” he said, “An enterprise which I believe is the truest human tradition of exploration and discovery.”

With so many pieces of us and our existence “spinning out into the cosmos,” he said the future of our cosmic travels, a time he predicted would see most human cultures engaged in this endeavor, would be like “a dandelion going to seed,” small parts of us spreading to all directions to grow anew.

This vision of us reaching out further, searching past what we know, is as hopeful today as it was when he said it. “I believe that the history of our species will never again be the same. We have committed ourselves to space and I do not think we are about to turn back.”

We haven’t. We just keep looking to go further. In 2015 we said hello to Pluto. Where will we head next?

What did he say that you found most inspiring? Travel to our comments below to tell us.

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Image: The Royal Institution/Andrew Khosravani