Sunita Williams Quotes

Spacewalking is a little like rock climbing in that everything, including and especially oneself, must be tethered or docked at all times. If you forget to tether a tool, it's gone. Ditto yourself.

When the guys come back in from the spacewalk, there really is a distinct smell of space; it's something I will never forget.

I'll be helping them getting suited up, getting them in the airlock, getting the airlock prepared, and getting them out the hatch, and then talking them through these three spacewalks.

The big reason why we don't have space colonies and regular trips to the moon is that flying into outer space is just plain 'hard.' The business of safely transporting people off the Earth is a costly affair that requires a lot of technology.

I've been so lucky to have done two spacewalks. If you looked at your wristwatch, I was outside about 15 hours, which is about 10 times around the world. And, you know, there's a whole time dilation, distortion thing.

It is an incredible treat and certainly one of the highlights of any astronaut's career to do a spacewalk.

It's a really big deal to do a spacewalk. It's much riskier than staying indoors. It's complex. It uses up a lot of the precious resources onboard. It uses up oxygen. It uses up carbon dioxide scrubbers.

When we're doing the space walks, we're working very very hard. Every single minute is choreographed. But there's a few minutes here and there where ground is maybe talking about something, and you have to put your tools down and wait. Just getting a chance to look through your visor and see the planet go by was incredible.

Everyone who's been in space would, I'm sure, welcome the opportunity for a return to the exhilarating experiences there.

There is good science you can do in space. There is stuff there you cannot do on Earth and we can gain understanding from it.

A lot of scientists on Earth think of things that they could do in zero g. Things like the way metals cure, for example, and the way fluids react in space can tell us a lot about some of the unknowns we have on Earth.

Astronauts have been stuck in low-Earth orbit, boldly going nowhere. American attempts to kick-start a new phase of lunar exploration have stalled amid the realisation that NASA's budget is too small for the job.

Especially when I first really started to work with Kenneth and Franklin, who had been in space already. And so, they were able to talk about space and tell me a few things about how things would really happen.

In 2009 I went up on the space shuttle. I was in space for 16 days and docked at the space station for 11 days. The entire crew did five space walks, of which I was involved with three of them. When you're doing a space walk, you always have a buddy with you. It's a very dangerous environment when you're doing a space walk.

Performing tai chi in space - it is comfortable; we got more outer space chi.

Being outside during the space walk, the view of the Earth is just spectacular, and getting a chance to do that is just unbelievable, everything about it. You are going around the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour, so you have 45 minutes of sunlight followed by 45 minutes of darkness. You do a lap every 90 minutes.

When I did my spacewalks, it was during space station construction. So the shuttle was docked to the fledgling ISS at the time. So we would always stay tethered.

My job during the EVAs, the spacewalks, is to act as the inside coordinator. I remain on the aft flight deck of the shuttle, and I act in a manner to help the gentlemen outside, my fellow crewmates, who are performing the EVA tasks.

Our mission on Apollo 14 was to be the first to do science on the moon, so we had to be careful about getting everything in during the allotted time.

We also had to bring with us some desired scientific equipment over to the station as well as assemble new machines. For that, I had to conduct two space walks.

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.

You're very well trained for the spacewalk, so when you go outside, it's not like the movies.

That's really why I want to go to space - I want to be weightless for so long that it gets boring.

I remember taking a space walk on the ISS. There I was, wrench in hand, tightening bolts on a new module. It was such a mundane task. But when I looked in one direction, there was Earth floating in vivid blues and greens. In the other direction, I could see the blackest black conceivable, punctured by unwavering pinpoints of starshine.

On Earth, I weighed 150 pounds; my suit and backpack weighed another 150. 300 pounds. Up there, I weighed only 50. So I could prance around on my toes. It was quite easy to do.