Eric Allin Cornell Quotes

Rocket science is tough, and rockets have a way of failing.

I've put a lot of my life into making it possible to fly in space at all.

For days after the launch, Sputnik was a wonderful curiosity. A man-made moon visible by ordinary citizens, it inspired awe and pride that humans had finally launched an object into space.

I left Aerospace because I wanted to go build, and put spacecraft together.

Not long after I got my test pilot qualification, I realised there was no manned space flight programme in the U.K., and there was unlikely to be one.

I do not remember how it got into my head to make the first calculations related to rocket. It seems to me the first seeds were planted by famous fantaseour, J. Verne.

I've always loved airplanes and flight. The space program was really important to me as a kid. I still have a photo of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon in my living room.

Growing up in the '60s and early '70s, with the space flight and the Apollo program, I always loved planes. I always loved rockets and I always loved space travel.

Building and launching rockets has been a lifelong hobby that my son and I share. We regularly travel to Nevada's Black Rock Desert to launch rockets.

By the time I was 13, I was very interested in rocketry.

All the best to SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, and, yes, the Progress teams, who are all working on their own solutions to open the frontier along with Boeing and the rest of the fliers trying to fly, all of whom I know personally share the dream. This isn't their fault; they just want to make things fly.

I wanted to be an aerospace engineer because I really like space. But I didn't go to the army.

As a young boy growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I was inspired by the nascent space age.

When I was a child, and I was at our school, everybody's parents were involved in space program. In every class, we have several kids whose fathers were flown cosmonauts or who prepared for the flight.

The Space Shuttle is the most effective device known to man for destroying dollar bills.

When I was growing up in Huntsville, Alabama, this is where the space and rocket center was. This is where all of the German rocket scientists came after war and started designing rockets for NASA, for the moon landing and all that.

A rocket is a reed that thinks brilliantly.

Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down ? That's not my department.

I am not sure what the future holds for me personally, but I envision myself continuing to work on spaceflight programs.

In high school, I was selected for NASA's Math & Science program. I'd hop on the yellow school bus and head up to Cape Canaveral.

Unfortunately, spaceflight takes a lot of time and money.

I interned at NASA for five years, and I grew up in Cape Canaveral, and my grandfather was an engineer on the Mercury capsule, and my grandmother was a software engineer. I literally grew up playing on the Mercury capsule prototypes.

But every crew that makes it to orbit is lucky. Spaceflight's not easy.

I think it's reasonable: you can own your nerd credibility when you're an astronaut.

The truth is, every single rocket launch off of planet Earth is risky.