Christa McAuliffe Quotes

The astronaut corps is a very small part of a very large team that enables human spaceflight.

The space shuttle has been a fantastic vehicle. It is unlike any other thing that we've ever built. Its capabilities have carried several hundred people into space.

Astronauts are very professional and when they're preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives.

After the Shuttle checks out on its two upcoming flights, it will be ready to take larger components up to the International Space Station later this fall.

I have had the privilege to be a member of many high-performance teams at NASA, both on and off the planet.

I will have a one-hour program called the Mission Watch, where I will describe details of the mission and give additional information about the lessons from space.

And now for Return to Flight, I'm chief of robotics working in the astronaut office in Houston, as a Canadian.

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.

He who commands an Apollo flight will not command a second one.

So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight.

The excitement really didn't start to build until the trailer - which was carrying me, with a space suit with ventilation and all that sort of stuff - pulled up to the launch pad.

Well, with so many space shuttle missions that we've done, I think it's just sort of natural that each one hasn't necessarily gotten the attention that the early ones did.

Because when we're in space, my job is primarily getting us there and getting us back.

Rendezvous day is the third day of our mission, and that's a big day for us.

Finally my dream came true in that there was a possibility that I could travel to the International Space Station. I've gone through the medicals and the training and now I'm officially, by the Russian Space Federation, a cosmonaut in training.

America can take man to the moon, and America can take men to Mars - and beyond.

I witnessed the building of the Space Shuttle Columbia, the first orbiter to be launched into space.

I operated a periscopic TV camera so the commander, Anatoly Artsebarsky, could establish where we were heading. It is real teamwork on Soyuz.

I've been approached to do some things with astronauts and the preparation that astronauts go through.

I think we know how to do Mars.

I was working as a flight director on the Gemini IX mission, and it seemed almost overnight I was picking up the responsibilities for the Apollo Program.

The basic thing you have to understand is everything that happens on that spaceship, from the time you crawl into that seat to the time it touches down, is controlled from the ground. There's no one thing that makes a good astronaut. I don't know any person with determination and will that can't go to space.

If I were to do a movie about Apollo 13, I'd be at NASA studying what it took to go into space. It's part of your job to go deep, to interview the right people.

We used to have a crew of three on board the space station and even at one time a crew of two people, so it's something we can adjust to.

I was a flight engineer on my second flight, which is the most senior position a non-American can have aboard the shuttle. We're the cockpit crew. We fly the vehicle up to space, dock the vehicle to the space station, undock it at the end of the mission, and return it to the ground.