Martin Rees Quotes

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.

During my 8 years as chairman, I had the privilege to peer into the future to see dynamic citizen astronauts returning to and from the heavens which we can expect in the future.

The building of the International Space Station is something wonderful, and it will show us how to take the next step beyond low-Earth orbit.

I hope that China will continue with space exploration. It would be logical to have international co-operation. I hope that it will come about and that I can be involved in it.

My childhood dreams were focused on being part of the effort to make humanity a multiplanetary species.

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

We will certainly see teachers, journalists, artists and poets in space. Whatever it takes to the be the best is what it will take to get you into space.

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

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.

America can take man to the moon, and America can take men to Mars - and beyond.

Space exploration is important research to our economic and national defense, and America's space program is a symbol of our success as a scientifically and technologically advanced nation.

We must become a space-faring nation.

We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here – our hopes and our journeys continue.

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.

The International Space Station is a great place to live for a year.

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.

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

I was a frustrated astronaut all my life. I grew up at a time when space seemed to have no boundaries, and lots of us presumed humans would be living on the moon and landing on Mars.

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

Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.

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.

I think both the space shuttle program and the International Space Station program have not really lived up to their expectations.

When the history books are written in a thousand years, when space travel would have become routine, the moment that humans first left Earth will be of huge importance. Star City is a central part of this story and it deserves more recognition.

After Apollo 17, America stopped looking towards the next horizon. The United States had become a space-faring nation, but threw it away. We have sacrificed space exploration for space exploitation, which is interesting but scarcely visionary.