Julie Payette Quotes

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

I think I need to continue to think and plan and marry all of the different things that we could do that make transportation in space from the earth to the space station, from the earth to the moon to space stations around the moon to visiting an asteroid.

It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.

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.

I think a Moon base is not necessary to get to Mars, but I think it will be helpful. It would give you a chance to develop and mature some systems; long duration, deep space stuff; and you're close enough to get some help, via radio from Earth.

With the mission to Mars, the whole world wants to get involved. So we actually have 13 different space agencies from around the world working on the global exploration road map.

Chemical propulsion is obsolete to go anywhere other than the moon. Three days - that's acceptable. But for Mars, we need propulsion technologies to get us there in, say, 60 days - then spend whatever length of time we want to spend and return when we want to come home.

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.

Well, the coolest thing I have seen so far, in terms of, like, me being an astronaut and seeing something unusual, was the rendezvous, the docking of a Progress spaceship.

I don't go along with going to Moon first to build a launch pad to go to Mars. We should go to Mars from Earth orbit. We have already been to the Moon; we've already practiced.

Supplying fuel for a Mars expedition from the lunar surface is often suggested, but it's hard to make it pay off - Moon bases are expensive, and just buying more rockets to launch fuel from Earth is relatively cheap.

If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.

We're not going to get humans to Mars until at least the mid-2030s, and the world is going to change by then.

I study orbital dynamics as a hobby. My idea of a good time is sitting down and drawing on that knowledge to imagine a space mission from beginning to end, getting as many details right as I can.

For the new century, back to the moon, back to the future and this time back to stay. And then a journey into tomorrow, a journey to another planet, a manned mission to Mars.

Mars is a long ways away. The moon is only 240,000 miles, but Mars is in the millions. It's too risky without spending more time going to the moon.

If you're going to go into space, you have to have an objective, a mission. Where do you want to go? Earth orbit? The moon? Mars? What's the technology to get there? You develop the technology for the mission.

I'd love to go into space again if there were a mission to Mars. I'd also love to go to a completely different planetary system, out of our solar system.

The space program needs a goal, and the goal should be humans to Mars.

President Bush announced we're going to Mars, which means he's given up on Earth.

President Obama is launching a new $6 billion space policy that will ultimately take astronauts to Mars. Of course, it's $6 billion and $45 if the astronauts have a carry-on.

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

Back in the days of Apollo, sending humans to the moon was the only viable way to get the scientific data we wanted. But now, with our computer and robotics technology, there's very little an astronaut can do on Mars that a well-designed rover can't.

The years of space flight since the orbiting of Sputnik I back in 1957 had produced many fascinating results, but they had also brought a realization of the many problems that surrounded the use of rockets for space flight.