Phillip Schofield Quotes

You have seen on TV how hard it is to go up 129,000 feet and how hard it is to come down.

We go up just into space - space is most commonly accepted to be 100 kilometres above the earth's surface, and we go up just beyond that to about 350,000 ft.

The jet stream is a very strong force and pushing a balloon into it is like pushing up against a brick wall, but once we got into it, we found that, remarkably, the balloon went whatever speed the wind went.

To jump and break the sound barrier will not be a mere record breaking experience or another extreme event that ends once the mission is accomplished.

As astronauts know better than anyone else, risks, incidents, and mishaps are inevitable in the development of any high-performance vehicle. The emergence of supersonic flight during the 1940s and of the Century Series of fighters in the 1950s came with the loss of several test pilots. Still, it was a glorious time.

I just felt that space was the next thing coming in aviation. It was higher, faster. It had the risk.

All at once the cockpit lit up with a sort of white glow because your entry was at 25,000 miles an hour and it was ionising some of the first particles of air you had. So it was kinda a little bit like being inside a weak neon bulb.

I took a month long vacation in the stratosphere, and you know it's very hard to hold your breath.

At 42,000' in approximately level flight, a third cylinder was turned on. Acceleration was rapid and speed increased to .98 Mach. The needle of the machmeter fluctuated at this reading momentarily, then passed off the scale. Assuming that the off-scale reading remained linear, it is estimated that 1.05 Mach was attained at this time.

The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.

Spoiler alert: I did not become an astronaut.

I did a little bit of flying in high school, but I've just always been inspired and excited about airplanes.

In Missouri, we built the steamships that plied the Mississippi. It was people of Missouri who believed that a human being could fly across the Atlantic Ocean alone. And it was Missourians who built the capsule in which an American first orbited the earth.

In Arizona, we're at 7,000 feet, so we're above half of the world's atmosphere. It's crisp but hard, a side-raking light that can be revealing but doesn't have the softness that maritime air has.

I flew helicopters, which actually is the second best view of the earth. The first best view is, I think, a little bit higher.

In order to be stimulated or moved in the future, we probably have to go into space and look at our world from there.

You need nerves of steel if climbing aboard a rocket is your career path.

The Martian atmosphere is very thin. It's like our atmosphere at 100,000 feet.

I got this letter asking me if I wanted to or if I would consider going to experimental test pilot school and becoming the first Negro astronaut and I thought it was crazy.

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

I have always been an aviation nerd. I read the magazines.

From the time I was a little itty-bitty kid, I was going to the airport every day. I began to study all the airplanes, and I'd draw all the airplanes.

It still amazes me, when I go out and fly the T-38, and I'm looking at those little, short, skinny little wings, and that thing's flying. It's just amazing to me, even now.

I first told my parents that I wanted to be an astronaut when I was 3 years old.

It was an honor to serve at Boeing on the 777.