Seth Shostak Quotes

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.

SpaceX lowered the cost of going into space by 10x.

My work at MIT had focused on what we could build in space once we had inexpensive space transportation and industrial facilities in orbit. And this led to various sorts of work in space development.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Terraforming our moon will take many decades and vast abilities. Before we can begin, we'll have to master the resources of our solar system - especially transporting raw masses over interplanetary distances.

In 2025, don't be surprised if a Chinese flag is placed on the moon.

Buzz Aldrin doesn't think we need to go back to the Moon - that we should go straight on to Mars. I'm more on the side that says we should go back to the Moon. I think there's a lot we can utilise the Moon for scientifically.

There should be an international lunar base. That is certainly doable.

I believe we need a more opportunistic and democratic approach to lunar exploration, now that we're shifting from U.S. government-sponsored space exploration to private expeditions.

I was motivated to improve the U.S. strategy of going back to the moon in 1985. That's a long time ago. Going back to the moon would be a great achievement for tourism adventure flights.

Having walked on the Moon, I know something about what we need to explore, really explore, in space.

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

To send humans back to the moon would not be advancing. It would be more than 50 years after the first moon landing when we got there, and we'd probably be welcomed by the Chinese. But we should return to the moon without astronauts and build, with robots, an international lunar base, so that we know how to build a base on Mars robotically.

Lunokhod

Space is where great scientific and commercial breakthroughs of the future will be made. Space is where we can achieve progress in making our country safer from ballistic missile attack. Space is also where medicines of the future will be made, and where some of our children may make their living.

The pace of progress on Mars depends upon the pace of progress of SpaceX.

It is practically certain that sometime during 1958, either the Russians or we, and most likely both, are going to shoot a rocket to the moon.

The United States ended the space shuttle program in 2011, after the ISS was complete. We gave up a national treasure forever.

If you take all the money we've spent at NASA since we landed on the moon and you had applied that money for incentives to the private sector, we would today probably have a permanent station on the moon, three or four permanent stations in space, a new generation of lift vehicles.

To me, we have never really exploited our ability in low-Earth orbit.

There is a potential to be a big explosion of what spaceflight is gonna mean to just an everyday person in the near future. I think it's very hopeful for our young people: all the exciting things that they could be doing in the future relative to space and space exploration.

I want the government to focus on the stuff we cannot yet do, like beginning to learn how we can live in space long enough to go to Mars or how to build and operate human communities on the Moon and Mars.