Eric C. Anderson Quotes

Fifty years after humans landed on the moon for the first time, America has driven a golden spike on the trail to new space exploration feats through the work of our commercial partner SpaceX and all of the dedicated and talented flight controllers at NASA and our international partners.

I was motivated to improve the U.S. strategy of going back to the moon in 1985. That's a long time ago. Going back to the moon would be a great achievement for tourism adventure flights.

The first arrival of earthly life on another celestial body ranks as an epochal event not only for our generation, but in the history of our planet. Neil Armstrong was at the cusp of the Apollo programme. This was a collective technological effort of epic scale, but his is the one name sure to be remembered centuries hence.

If we don't do it, somebody else will. The Chinese, the Europeans and the Japanese all have the goal of going to the moon. Certainly we don't want to wake up and see that they have a base there before we do.

I don't think the space station is innovative. Going to the moon was innovative because we had no idea how to do it.

The next humans to walk on the moon may be Chinese. Only China seems to have the resources, the dirigiste government, and the willingness to undertake a risky Apollo-style programme. If Americans or Europeans venture to the moon and beyond, this will have to be in a very different style and with different motives.

We are not building the space station for science any more than we went to the moon for science, but we got a hell of a lot of good science out of it.

When President Kennedy challenged Americans to go to the moon, the question wasn't whether we'd get there, it was only when we'd get there.

My expertise is the space program and what it should be in the future based on my experience of looking at the transitions that we've made between pre-Sputnik days and getting to the moon.

Most people never believed in the real possibility of going to the moon, and neither did I until I was in my twenties.

I think I was very interested in the space program as a kid, watching the first Apollo missions to the moon, and it's something I thought that would be a lot of, of fun and exciting and a very worthwhile job.

I respect John Kennedy for saying that he had a dream that we'd go to the moon before the end of the decade.

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.

Kennedy had made a mess in Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. He had to do something to look good. The Apollo program of going to the Moon was quite a goal.

Why should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction and expenditure?

Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.

In 2025, don't be surprised if a Chinese flag is placed on the moon.

Well, I don't think we should go to the moon. I think we maybe should send some politicians up there.

Sending a couple of guys to the Moon and bringing them back safely? That's a stunt! That's not historic.

If you read about the astronauts who went to the moon - the 12 who walked on it, and the others who orbited - all suffered serious mental trauma of one kind or another.

We knew it was going to be difficult to get to the moon. We didn't know how difficult.

For the first time in history all the major countries in the world are pushing together to reach this goal... building something in space that is really for all humankind.

All the Chinese have to do is fly around the Moon and back, and they'll appear to have won the return to the Moon with humans. They could put one person on the surface of the Moon for one day and he'd be a national hero.

We'll go back to the moon by not learning anything new.

I have the LIFE magazine of the men walking on the moon.