Henry Spencer Quotes

You know, Scooter's going to do the first separation burn; I'm going to do the second separation burn.

Wouldn't it be awesome if we had a jetpack that wasn't a death trap? The problem is that it is going to be so power inefficient. I just couldn't live with that... it would be as loud as a motorcycle.

As far as the satellite itself is concerned, that doesn’t give me any apprehension at all.

The reason we chose vertical landing as our recovery architecture is that vertical landing scales really well.

Most of the federal government could be shut down.

The shutdown may have temporarily sidetracked the Republicans, yet Obamacare threatens much worse for the Democrats. By 2014 the former will be ancient history, while the latter will be an ongoing mess.

Houston, we have a problem.

If officers desire to have control over their commands, they must remain habitually with them, industriously attend to their instruction and comfort, and in battle lead them well.

If Europe’s example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don’t drive them too much.

I understand we have to keep a significant amount of fossil fuel in the ground. I'm committed to that. But I'm not going to just all of a sudden try to stop the cars of California or to increase dramatically the number of ships carrying oil into the state when we already have our own production.

Roger, liftoff, and the clock is started.

Roger. We've got you, we're go on that alarm.

In my mind, the men and women of NASA are history's modern pioneers. They attempt the impossible, accept failure, and then back to the drawing board while the rest of us stand back and criticize.

The most important thing is to build local capacity, meaning train local forces, build the local defense institutions, defense ministries, command and control, because, in the long run, it is expected that local forces are stabilizing their own country, fighting terrorism themselves, instead of NATO deploying a large number of combat troops in combat operations.

Put the 'off' button on.

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily.

The political disfunction that has brought about the shutdown and now threatens default, isn't so much gridlock. It is exposing the fatal flaw in our Constitution and highly distinct system of government. In other words, it's the Constitution's fault. Something truly catastrophic was bound to happen sooner or later.

The worst thing you can do is allow a coalition to determine what your mission is.

Leveling off at 42,000 feet, I had thirty percent of my fuel, so I turned on rocket chamber three and immediately reached .96 Mach. I noticed that the faster I got, the smoother the ride. Suddenly the Mach needle began to fluctuate. It went up to .965 Mach - then tipped right off the scale ... We were flying supersonic. And it was a smooth as a baby's bottom; Grandma could be sitting up there sipping lemonade.

We consume about 25 percent of the world's oil. We only have 2 percent of the reserves.

The dark aftermath of the frontier, of the vast promise of possibility this country first offered, is an inflated sense of American entitlement today. We want what we want, and we want it now. Easy credit. Fast food. A straight shot down the interstate from point A to point B. The endless highway is crowded with the kinds of cars large enough to take a mountain pass in high snow. Instead they are used to take children from soccer practice to Pizza Hut. In the process they burn fuel like there's no tomorrow. Tomorrow's coming.

It takes oil to keep the lamps burning.

Since it is the very substance of the animal, it is the blood which transports the fuel.If the animal did not habitually replace, through nourishing themselves,what they losethrough respiration, the lamp would very soon run out of oil and the animal would perish, just as the lamp goes out when it lacks fuel.