Buzz Aldrin Quotes

Does it make sense for the U.S. to expend hundreds of billions of dollars to mount a new Apollo-style program to return to the moon? Or have we blazed that trail? Shouldn't we help other nations achieve this goal with their own resources but with our help?

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

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.

Donald Trump's administration is floating a proposal to return to the moon - and to shut down the International Space Station to help pay for it. The first part of this idea is good. The second is horrible.

The fact we don't have a lunar base has nothing to do with the technology. It has to do with public commitment and societal support.

One of the things I'm proudest of is, on my record 'That Was the Year that Was' in 1965, I made a joke about spending $20 billion sending some clown to the moon. I was against the manned space program then, and I'm even more against it now, that whole waste of money.

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?

Russia is still the leader in world space exploration. But its position of leader involves great responsibility - we have no right to lag behind. We can and we must move constantly forward.

We need the kind of leadership exemplified by President Kennedy to just do it! But we must do it as good stewards, aggressively exerting control over the moon. We can best do this by going there.

Not everyone will understand this need for America to lead the world in space.

Many of us in Congress have been calling on the Administration to articulate a bold mission for NASA. It seems that the President is answering that call. I wholeheartedly support his vision for going back to the moon, and from there to worlds beyond.

Competition-driven innovation and price pressure that commercial practices foster can only make human spaceflight ever more common and U.S. leadership in this domain ever clearer.

The Americans are still the leaders in human space flight. I feel we have a danger here of kind of stagnating. We're kind of resting on our laurels and there's a danger going forward if we don't take bold steps to really support human space flight in this country that we could fall behind. After the space shuttle is retired, we're going to have a big gap, five to seven years, at least where we're not going to have the ability to send our own astronauts into space, we'll have to buy rides on the Russian Soyuz, and so that will be a pretty big step down for us.

Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.

I think it's good to have competition. Now we have a third country that can launch astronauts, so it's good for all of us. It makes us a little bit more competitive and wanting to be the leader.

But I don't think we'll go there until we go back to the moon and develop a technology base for living and working and transporting ourselves through space.

The government will see that human spaceflight is useful - for science and the economy - and inspirational.

The way I see it, what is going to come out of the moon activities is a respect for U.S. leadership.

Through these ongoing activities and possibly in the future, a Canadian will go live and work on the International Space Station and we will continue to make Canadians proud of our achievements in space.

We didn't go to the moon to explore or because it was in our DNA or because we're Americans. We went because we were at war and we felt a threat.

The Chinese are planning a manned mission to the moon sometime after 2020, and subsequently, to Mars. The U.S. has abandoned that dream.

Just to continue a space program because it's a space program? No, I don't think we have an obligation for that.

The United States ended the space shuttle program in 2011, after the ISS was complete. We gave up a national treasure forever.

Obama's space policy doesn't differ much from George W. Bush's.

My view is that we should go back to the moon, build up the infrastructure to make flights there commonplace - be comfortable with it - then use that infrastructure to expand and go to Mars.