Alan Stern Quotes

I grew up watching a lot of the coverage of the early U.S. space program, all the way back starting with Mercury and then through Gemini and Apollo and of course going to the moon as the main part of the Apollo program.

When I was 12, I saw the Apollo moon landings, and I thought that was really fantastic and exciting and thought, 'That's what I want to do.'

I always admired the U.S. as the country of the space shuttle, of technological achievement.

There was a space program before there was integrated circuits.

Manned spaceflight has lost its glamour - understandably so, because it hardly seems inspiring, 40 years after Apollo, for astronauts merely to circle the Earth in the space shuttle and the International Space Station.

If it hadn't been for the Cold War, neither Russia nor America would have been sending people into space.

I was with Tom Wolfe at the launch of Apollo 17, which led him to 'The Right Stuff.'

As far as entertainment, 'The Right Stuff' is a good movie. As far as a documentary of the early space days, which they purported it to be, it is not at all.

It's pretty amazing to me that we have had a space shuttle program that's lasted for 30 years - for one space shuttle. That's quite an achievement.

We can dream about putting a man on the Moon, and within a decade, we actually made it happen.

For me, maybe, in comparison with other cosmonauts who were inspired by the Sputnik launch or Yuri Gagarin launch, I think I'm cosmonaut of another generation. For me, the spaceflights were sort of a common thing.

On July 20th, 1969, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong took the most expensive selfie in history. As the apex of an 8-year, $130 billion effort, they posed in front of a camera and took a shot designed to do one thing - to show our free enterprise democratic system was better than the rigid, authoritarian system that wanted to destroy us.

We certainly would not be here, living and working on the International Space Station without the commitment and dedication of all the folks who worked the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo Programs as well as the Russian Space Program.

I'm a major NASA nerd, so I've spent a lot of time learning about the space race and the Apollo missions.

In the '60s astronauts were rockstars. Everyone wanted to be an astronaut.

I felt most proud on the success of the Apollo mission.

There are so many women who contributed in a very real way in pushing for the space program during the time in which there was a lot of competition to get into space first, and to know that there were African-American women who were integral in that success is pretty phenomenal.

I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.

If you want a nation to have space exploration ambitions, you've got to send humans.

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.

I was only a hero by default. The flights were few and far between. There weren't that many astronauts. The moon flights were so interesting and exciting.

There were about six years when there was not one American who went into space. We shouldn't do that again.

Everyone, red state, blue state, everyone supports space exploration.

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.

If we hadn't put a man on the moon, there wouldn't be a Silicon Valley today.