Wernher von Braun Quotes

I want to get to the moon. I want to go to Mars.

The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices

Yesterday, we sought telescopes good enough to see all the planets. Today, we seek vehicles good enough to reach them.

I like the planets because they are real places that you can go to and send machines to. Faraway astronomy - galactic astronomy and extra-galactic astronomy - is really cool stuff, but to me, it's about destinations.

It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.

I watched the moon landing as a boy, and I thought that was the most exciting thing ever, going into space, orbiting Earth and exploring other planets. That looked fantastic.

I've been lucky enough to fly to space twice.

You don't go into space just for the science. Economically, it is not worth it. I think the reason we should be in space is for the exploration; it's the human endeavour.

With the mission to Mars, the whole world wants to get involved. So we actually have 13 different space agencies from around the world working on the global exploration road map.

The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited.

Clearly, some creative thinking is badly needed if humans are to have a future beyond Earth. Returning to the Moon may be worthy and attainable, but it fails to capture the public's imagination. What does get people excited is the prospect of a mission to Mars.

To try to really land a spacecraft really on another world is really difficult, and if we lose that ability, it's going to be heartbreaking.

Rockets are cool. There's no getting around that.

The solar system should be viewed as our backyard, not as some sequence of destinations that we do one at a time.

Mars is there, waiting to be reached.

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.

So I saw many planets, and they looked just a little bit brighter than they do from Earth.

Man must rise above the Earth -- to the top of the atmosphere and beyond -- for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives

For the new century, back to the moon, back to the future and this time back to stay. And then a journey into tomorrow, a journey to another planet, a manned mission to Mars.

It is rash to set limits to the progress of science. A man who had maintained at Queen Victoria’s Jubilee that within fifty years one would fly the Atlantic in a matter of hours would have risked being certified and locked up; yet we have seen this happen, and in the circumstances I am not prepared to rule out with any confidence the possibility one day of journeys through space in vessels carrying supplies of food and oxygen to the moon and the nearer planets.

I think we know how to do Mars.

The boundary between space and the earth is purely arbitrary. And I'll probably always be interested in this planet - it's my favorite.

Anything that stimulates the public's imagination about the nobility and the importance of space exploration is something that I'm very excited to be a part of.

People keep talking about how we have to go to Mars. We may want to go to Mars sometime.

I believe in the importance of flying in space and the research that we do.