Gregory Benford Quotes

My parents grew up during the space race, and I think they imagined the future would be us living on moon bases and everyone has rocket shoes.

Growing up in the '60s and early '70s, with the space flight and the Apollo program, I always loved planes. I always loved rockets and I always loved space travel.

We can dream about putting a man on the Moon, and within a decade, we actually made it happen.

I'm a major NASA nerd, so I've spent a lot of time learning about the space race and the Apollo missions.

There was a space program before there was integrated circuits.

The moon landing was such a magnificent accomplishment in U.S. space history. I think that boots on the moon was just one indicator of the rapid technology advancement and really just showed what we can do when all of us are dedicated to a single goal over a long period of time.

I grew up on the south side of Chicago in the 1960s, and I think there was a synchronicity of events that inspired me to be an astronaut, and, of course, the backdrop is nothing less than Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. That was a time in our nation where we aspired to great things, and we achieved them.

When I was a child, and I was at our school, everybody's parents were involved in space program. In every class, we have several kids whose fathers were flown cosmonauts or who prepared for the flight.

I always admired the U.S. as the country of the space shuttle, of technological achievement.

The biggest benefit of Apollo was the inspiration it gave to a growing generation to get into science and aerospace.

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.

When the history books are written in a thousand years, when space travel would have become routine, the moment that humans first left Earth will be of huge importance. Star City is a central part of this story and it deserves more recognition.

Sending people into space is very important culturally. That's really the justification. You cannot rationally justify it on the basis of the science and technology we get out of it.

It's like turning the space program over to the Long Island Railroad.

If we hadn't put a man on the moon, there wouldn't be a Silicon Valley today.

Throughout history, when societies have been faced with big challenges, they've put their best people on them. During the Space Race, American and Russian scientists, engineers, astronauts and cosmonauts pushed the bounds of what was possible and landed men on the moon.

You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times... and safely home again.

I can remember in early elementary school when the Russians launched the first satellite. There was still so much unknown about space. People thought Mars was probably populated.

Space exploration is important research to our economic and national defense, and America's space program is a symbol of our success as a scientifically and technologically advanced nation.

I was 8 when we landed on the moon. I was so into the space program as a kid. Eventually, I realized it was very unlikely that a Mexican kid in the early '70s was going to be an astronaut.

I feel we need to remind the world about the Apollo missions and that we can still do impossible things.

I think it's like that for people who don't remember 1969 first-hand. It's that sense of 'old hat.' Of 'been there, done that.' Space shuttles, space stations, communications satellites, GPS - they're all part of our everyday, taken-for-granted world in 2009, not part of an incredible odyssey.

The Space Program is an investment of the nation’s future…. Humans will not be confined to this planet forever.

I'm a very amateur scientist. For me, it started with the Mercury space program and onward to the moon landing in my impressionable adolescent years.

Funding for the original manned Voyager Mars Program was scratched in 1968, before humans had gotten out of Low Earth Orbit. Mid-'60s plans for a Venus fly-by with astronauts actually flying by it met the same fate.