Seth Shostak Quotes

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.

Once you get into space, you can really unleash a lot of creativity, but the launch itself? I have been through all of the creative ways, and believe me, chemical rockets are the best.

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

I founded a launch company called International Microspace when I graduated medical school in 1989. We were trying to build a microsatellite launcher.

Claiming that solid rockets are necessary for a heavy-lift launcher is obvious nonsense.

Rockets are cool. There's no getting around that.

Man must at all costs overcome the Earth's gravity and have, in reserve, the space at least of the Solar System.

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.

Once solved, the severe handicaps imposed on space exploration by the weight and chemical limitations of rockets would no longer apply. The whole timetable of our conquest of the planets in our solar system would be tremendously speeded up, from hot Mercury all the way out to frigid Pluto.

There are few aspects of everyday life that aren't touched by the technologies developed for space travel.

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

Well, it's still a bit uncertain, but I will do the consulting, and I'll see how I can contribute. But I'm sure whatever I do will involve the space program. That's where my passion is.

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.

I don't think we're going to build a 50-person spacecraft or a 100-person spacecraft.

The rockets... can be built so powerfully that they could be capable of carrying a man aloft.

My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars - this is very important - so you don't have to carry the return fuel when you go there.

We do need different types of propulsion to get to Mars. I wrote one of the first Ph.D. theses on that in the 1960s.

Lighter computers and lighter sensors would let you have more function in a given weight, which is very important if you are launching things into space, and you have to pay by the pound to put things there.

To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne.

With every inch of land on Earth now catalogued by our satellites, the stars are the next place we as a species must travel. And with a booming world population that will hit 9.1 billion in 2050, large-scale space travel may become a necessity.

While the circumnavigation of the solar system seems farfetched, it may not be once the problem of effective anti-gravitational control is solved.

Getting to space for satellites is tough. Getting to space with humans aboard is even tougher.

Aviation - and space travel, in particular - have always been especially captivating.

An experienced designer with more freedom to act might have realised that there was just too much optimism in the Ares I concept: that a shuttle SRB was simply too small as a first stage for a rocket carrying the relatively heavy Orion spacecraft.

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