Alan Stern Quotes

We are going to Mars. My life will not be complete until an astronaut sets foot on the red dust of Mars.

I think sometime we will go to Mars and I think we'll explore it with humans sometime, but I think it's really wise to do all the robotic exploration ahead of time and learn as much as possible. Once we have learned as much as possible with the robots, then that's the time to send people, and let them then continue the research that the robots have started.

On Sunday August 5, 2012, I was among a group of people who witnessed the Rover landing on Mars in real time at NASA's Caltech-managed Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

We want to make sure we get living astronauts to the surface of Mars.

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.

The guys who walk on Mars are going to be historic.

It's not going to do any good to land on Mars if we're stupid.

My key aim is to get man on the surface of Mars by the mid-2030s.

I think humans will reach Mars, and I would like to see it happen in my lifetime.

My grandfather allowed as how I might even live long enough to see a Mars landing. I haven't, of course, except in fiction, including my own, and strongly doubt that I ever will.

There's nothing I would like more than to watch a manned Mars landing.

When I was a kid, I was reliably informed that we'd have gone to Mars by 1985, and of course it's 2012, and we're still really no closer to a human expedition to Mars, but that shouldn't detract from the amazing achievements that are being done on a day-to-day basis by robotic envoys.

People will visit Mars, they will settle mars, and we should because it's cool.

I would like to die on Mars, just not on impact.

By 2025 we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. So we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow and I expect to be around in see it.

Seeing a full display of humanity involved in space is a game-changer for everyone. We've all looked at the stars; we've all imagined what was going on. Not everyone wants to go, but everyone wants to know what it's like.

Getting a team of scientists on Mars could be transformative.

I would love to set foot on another planet - lunar or Mars or somewhere.

I am humbled and excited by new opportunities for me to support and share the amazing work NASA is doing to help us travel farther into the solar system and work with the next generation of science and technology leaders.

If you go on a journey to Mars and get into deep space, there is several hundred times, maybe 300 times the radiation.

It's clear that the only thing that is inhibiting us from doing further human exploration of space is money and the will to do it.

I personally think going to Mars, if it takes two years or two and a half years, that's doable. Certainly, the first people who go there, that's going to be a big motivator, being first getting to Mars.

Mars is key to humanity's future in space. It is the closest planet that has all the resources needed to support life and technological civilization. Its complexity uniquely demands the skills of human explorers, who will pave the way for human settlers.

Eventually we're going to go to Mars, and I firmly believe the first person that sets foot on Mars will get there on a Boeing rocket.

I have never been to Mars. What will we discover when we get there? A red landscape, quiet horizon, frozen glaciers? Probably all is as beautiful, in its own way, as the Earth was thousands of years ago.