Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

Congress came to see NASA primarily as a jobs program, not an exploratory agency.

NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world's premier space exploration agency, and we are well served by politicians working to keep it that way, instead of turning it into a mere jobs program, or worse, cutting its budget.

I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.

As chairman of the Senate subcommittee responsible for NASA appropriations, I say not a penny for this nutty fantasy.

The government will see that human spaceflight is useful - for science and the economy - and inspirational.

Just to continue a space program because it's a space program? No, I don't think we have an obligation for that.

The head of NASA ought to be a space professional, not a politician.

Boeing, LockMart, and hundreds of other companies, large and small, work in the space business, and they also create new techniques and technology; but they'd be nowhere if NASA and the Department of Defense hadn't shown the way by funding the first big rockets and satellites.

Would offering the Mars Prize damage NASA? I don't think so.

I'm hoping that the suspension of the space program is just that, a suspension, and that it's not the final say in the matter, because I think we need it.

Russia is still the leader in world space exploration. But its position of leader involves great responsibility - we have no right to lag behind. We can and we must move constantly forward.

After Apollo 17, America stopped looking towards the next horizon. The United States had become a space-faring nation, but threw it away. We have sacrificed space exploration for space exploitation, which is interesting but scarcely visionary.

You see countries like India really investing in their space program because they see it as inspirational and good for their economy.

For NASA, space is still a high priority.

With his deeds, not only words, President Obama has revitalized our struggling space program.

Does it make sense for the U.S. to expend hundreds of billions of dollars to mount a new Apollo-style program to return to the moon? Or have we blazed that trail? Shouldn't we help other nations achieve this goal with their own resources but with our help?

I think a lot of people in Washington are extremely suspicious of NASA.

Canada and space are a natural fit.

I hope there will be continued U.K. investment in human spaceflight to enable Britain to benefit from space travel in the longer term and that many more Britons - women and men - will travel into space.

NASA works for the White House. There are many at NASA that wish they were building a modern replacement for the Shuttle. However, they had marching orders to instead work on other things, some of which should have no place in a research organization.

Our country... invests a tiny fraction of 1 percent in NASA, and this is what's so amazing to me, is with that small investment, we do so much for the country.

NewSpace, commercial space - whatever you want to call it - is rising, with or without government support. It is rising in West Texas and on the Gulf Coast, in California and on the Virginia coast, and rising from the ashes of the old space program in Florida and in small shops and university labs in a hundred places in between.

NASA has made a difference.

Luxembourg's aims is to be in the top 10 space-faring nations in the world.

Over the last eight years, the Obama-Clinton administration has undermined our space program tremendously. That will change. So many good things come out of it, including great jobs. And it will change very quickly under a Trump administration and it will change before it is too late.