Wendy Kopp Quotes

If you look, like, in 1960, there was no such thing as an astronaut. It was a totally fanciful concept, but nine years later or whatever, we were landing on the moon, which is just astonishing.

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

From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It's not a miracle; we just decided to go.

I don't think the space station is innovative. Going to the moon was innovative because we had no idea how to do it.

The Apollo program certainly had no real commercial value. It was done for very different reasons and, I think, very good reasons for the time. It's an extraordinary achievement of mankind, but it wasn't sustainable.

When President Kennedy challenged Americans to go to the moon, the question wasn't whether we'd get there, it was only when we'd get there.

Like many of my fellow entrepreneurs, I didn't create Hearsay Social with my co-founder Steve Garrity because it would be fun and easy, but because we're at our best when faced with enormous challenges.

I respect John Kennedy for saying that he had a dream that we'd go to the moon before the end of the decade.

Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.

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.

I think when the United States of America put a man on the moon in 1969, that was one of the greatest accomplishments mankind has ever done.

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 not going to do any good to land on Mars if we're stupid.

Competition and competitive rhetoric can be healthy. It's what drove the United States to pursue the Soviet Union into space, creating countless innovations along the way.

If we don't do it, somebody else will. The Chinese, the Europeans and the Japanese all have the goal of going to the moon. Certainly we don't want to wake up and see that they have a base there before we do.

After World War II, scientific research in the U.S. was well supported. In the 1960s, when I came to America, the sky was the limit, and this conducive atmosphere enabled many of us to pursue esoteric research that resulted in America winning the lion's share of Nobel Prizes.

American greatness was elevated significantly after Sputnik.

In 1962, President Kennedy succeeded in captivating Americans by explaining the advantages of being the first country to reach the moon and the dangers of allowing another nation to beat us there.

The people who built the space program - both Soviet and U.S. - were readers of science fiction.

Of course, mankind would not have landed on the Moon in 1969, were it not for two things: conquered Nazi rocket technology and post-war anti-Communist paranoia in the United States.

In a way, J.F.K. was the high point of the American dream. In order to go to the moon and back, all we did was say we could - and we did.

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.

In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science - really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.

Just as the lunar landings inspired many young people to consider careers in space and related fields, the solution of the challenging instrumentation problems presented in space science can inspire young people to push beyond the current state of the art.

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.