Ellen Stofan Quotes

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

The Chinese are planning a manned mission to the moon sometime after 2020, and subsequently, to Mars. The U.S. has abandoned that dream.

Exploring Mars is a far different venture from Apollo expeditions to the moon; it necessitates leaving our home planet on lengthy missions with a constrained return capability.

Every day, we get a little bit closer to the kind of expertise and the kind of experience we're going to need to go there. I'd love to be the guy walking on Mars.

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

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

What are you going to do with astronauts who first reach the surface of Mars and then turn around and rocket back home-ward? What are they going to do, write their memoirs? Would they go again? Having them repeat the voyage, in my view, is dim-witted. Why don't they stay there on Mars?

I would suspect strongly that over a period of time, if we put our mind to going to Mars, it will be a consortium of several countries.

'The Martian' may be fiction, but at NASA, we are working to make it a reality.

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.

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.

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

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.

The space program is a peaceful project. The next door is opening. We have to go farther into space. But, before that, we need to develop far more improved nutrition and more advanced spacecraft.

If I were part of Gaganyaan, I could have been sure that for the next few years, there would have been a second space mission and a third space mission.

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.

So everything turned out fine, and we were given the opportunity to go to Washington and be briefed on the project of man in space, and given the opportunity to choose whether we wanted to get involved or not.

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.

In Mars, we've been given a wonderful set of moons... where we can send continuous numbers of people.

By refocusing our space program on Mars for America's future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it's time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface.

So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight.

I'm in favor of changing the destination of humans. There are a lot of manned missions that can be done, but not in the direction of the moon.

We've gotta reinvest in space travel. We should've never left the moon.

We'll go back to the moon by not learning anything new.

Every couple of years, we could dispatch people from Earth to Mars.