Ellen Stofan Quotes

I would enjoy flying to Mars. This was the dream of the first cosmonauts. I wish I could realize it! I am ready to fly without coming back.

I've always been interested in the idea of space exploration. When I was younger it was just a dream, but the theory of rockets being able to travel through space was very much alive. I found it very exciting.

I watched the moon landing as a boy, and I thought that was the most exciting thing ever, going into space, orbiting Earth and exploring other planets. That looked fantastic.

I've always been interested in space and the idea of exploration in that area since I was a child growing up through the '60s.

There are people who would love to spend their last ten years, or five years, or whatever it is, on the surface of Mars.

I think here in America the space programme was such an enticing thing to be going on, that the thought of a family being able to go into space and live up there was really kind of mind-bending at the time.

Ever since I was nine years old and I watched Neil and Buzz walk on the moon, I have felt passionately that this is an interesting human adventure. This is one of the things we're doing that is really fundamentally important, as we leave our home planet, but also exciting.

Anything that stimulates the public's imagination about the nobility and the importance of space exploration is something that I'm very excited to be a part of.

I would like to die on Mars, just not on impact.

Going to Mars is a bunch of baby steps, and it started off with the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin.

We are absolutely ready to go to Mars. It's going to be a fantastic journey getting there and very exciting times.

A lot of people, I think, would love to see the earth from above, wear a spacesuit. Certainly, when I was a kid, I wanted to wear a spacesuit.

America's love affair with traveling into outer space is deeply entrenched.

It's not a matter of if we're going to go to Mars, it's a matter of when.

I think that space exploration as a broad activity is the most important things that humans can do. I've always found it fascinating, interesting, compelling, and I have a drive to go out into space.

After being once in space, I was keen to go back there. But it didn't happen.

NASA is an utterly fascinating place, and the fact that the buildings look so anonymous almost makes it more fascinating. You walk by a generic office-park-looking building, and you have no idea what's going on inside.

Perhaps the best motivation for going to Mars is political. It is obvious that no single nation currently has either the will or the resources to do it alone, but a consortium of nations and space agencies could achieve it within 20 years.

The guys who walk on Mars are going to be historic.

Going to Mars would evolve humankind into a two-planet species.

I've discovered that half the people would love to go into space and there's no need to explain it to them. The other half can't understand and I couldn't explain it to them. If someone doesn't know why, I can't explain it.

I have wanted to fly into space for many years, but never imagined it would really be feasible.

I'm convinced that sending people to Mars is so expensive that if you go once and bring the people back and then go again and bring the people back, we're eventually going to run out of money. But what if we send people the first time and they don't come back? What if they stay there?

Perhaps one day I will go into space.

A journey into space is the greatest adventure I can imagine.