“The universe is beautiful. It’s something like a new woman that I was going to date. You’re dark, and you’re massive, and you have a black hole, and all of those elements I want to explore, just like you would explore on a new date: you want to dive deep into them, and feel around, and just see what’s going to come out of that.

“The time it takes to get from one star to another star is — you need to travel at the speed of light, and us humans can’t even fathom the concept of that kind of time, because it’s really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really fun to think about taking a speed-of-light ride.”

— Dr. Jimes Tooper