Carl Sagan Quotes

Kennedy had made a mess in Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. He had to do something to look good. The Apollo program of going to the Moon was quite a goal.

Of course, mankind would not have landed on the Moon in 1969, were it not for two things: conquered Nazi rocket technology and post-war anti-Communist paranoia in the United States.

By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American.

When we went to the moon and realized that the Soviet Union had no realistic plans of getting to the moon, then we stopped going to the moon.

Apollo 11 was the movie premiere of moon landings, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Neil was a bit of a mystic, but also a taciturn guy from what I can tell. He really saw the moon as looking like the American high desert. He wasn't someone who dealt in metaphors.

One of the things I'm proudest of is, on my record 'That Was the Year that Was' in 1965, I made a joke about spending $20 billion sending some clown to the moon. I was against the manned space program then, and I'm even more against it now, that whole waste of money.

When Kennedy said, 'Let's go to the moon,' we didn't yet have a vehicle that wouldn't kill you on launch. He said we'll land a man on the moon in eight years and bring him back. That was an audacious goal to put forth in front of the American people.

In 1962, President Kennedy succeeded in captivating Americans by explaining the advantages of being the first country to reach the moon and the dangers of allowing another nation to beat us there.

In the late '60s, I was seven, eight, nine years old, and what was going on in the news at that time that really excited a seven, eight, nine year old boy was the Space Race.

Did a man really walk on the moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered.

The next humans to walk on the moon may be Chinese. Only China seems to have the resources, the dirigiste government, and the willingness to undertake a risky Apollo-style programme. If Americans or Europeans venture to the moon and beyond, this will have to be in a very different style and with different motives.

Lunokhod

I was with Tom Wolfe at the launch of Apollo 17, which led him to 'The Right Stuff.'

In space-flight terms, six landings on the moon back in the Sixties and Seventies doesn't mean much.

Apparently, we've been to the moon in 1969, 1970. We've been there six times, I don't believe a word of it. Some people do.

If you look, like, in 1960, there was no such thing as an astronaut. It was a totally fanciful concept, but nine years later or whatever, we were landing on the moon, which is just astonishing.

A space nerd as a kid, I learned early that putting a man on the moon took American unity, grit, determination, teamwork, hardship, innovation, sacrifice and patriotism.

People say, oh we just need charismatic leaders to continue on to Mars. Now we've gone to the moon, of course Mars is next. No. Mars was never, of course, next. It is next if you think we went to the moon because we're explorers, but if you know we went to the moon because we were at war then we're never going to Mars. There's no military reason to do it, to justify the expenditure.

The United States now sleeps under a Soviet moon

NASA was invented as a response to Cold War steps. There are those who presumed that we went to the moon because we're explorers. We went to the moon because we were at war with the Soviet Union. And so when it became clear that they (Soviet Union) were not going to the moon, we're done with the moon.

Landing on the moon was a dream that millions of kids have had for hundreds of years.

Most people never believed in the real possibility of going to the moon, and neither did I until I was in my twenties.

I respect John Kennedy for saying that he had a dream that we'd go to the moon before the end of the decade.

Why should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction and expenditure?

Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.