Eugene Cernan Quotes

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.

The space shuttle has been a fantastic vehicle. It is unlike any other thing that we've ever built. Its capabilities have carried several hundred people into space.

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.

I think we know how to do Mars.

It's pretty amazing to me that we have had a space shuttle program that's lasted for 30 years - for one space shuttle. That's quite an achievement.

We certainly would not be here, living and working on the International Space Station without the commitment and dedication of all the folks who worked the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo Programs as well as the Russian Space Program.

The astronaut corps is a very small part of a very large team that enables human spaceflight.

If you want a nation to have space exploration ambitions, you've got to send humans.

Every shuttle mission's been successful.

There were about six years when there was not one American who went into space. We shouldn't do that again.

Well, with so many space shuttle missions that we've done, I think it's just sort of natural that each one hasn't necessarily gotten the attention that the early ones did.

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

I remember the moon landings, and Apollo was the paradigm by which all progress was measured at that time. And I knew that creating a true space-faring civilization was both possible and practical. What I failed to realize was that the effort would fail due to bureaucratic inertia and political apathy.

I've been approached to do some things with astronauts and the preparation that astronauts go through.

I want manned spaceflight, not just back to the Moon, but beyond that. And I want my daughters and my son to have their own July 20, 1969, to remember. Apollo 11 didn't give us wings; it only showed us how far the wings we had would take us.

Science does not just drive space travel - space travel also drives science.

Going to Mars is a bunch of baby steps, and it started off with the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin.

I have had the privilege to be a member of many high-performance teams at NASA, both on and off the planet.

We used to have a crew of three on board the space station and even at one time a crew of two people, so it's something we can adjust to.

Having the opportunity to fly the first flight of something like a space shuttle was the ultimate test flight.

Ironically, it is only when disaster strikes that the shuttle makes the headlines. Its routine flights attracted less media interest than unmanned probes to the planets or the images from the Hubble Telescope. The fate of Columbia (like that of Challenger in 1986) reminded us that space is still a hazardous environment.

Although I know a lot of the previous shuttle flights, in theory, had their tasks laid out; but there were still some changes that came along for them.

Space is going to be commonplace.

I was only a hero by default. The flights were few and far between. There weren't that many astronauts. The moon flights were so interesting and exciting.

If we want to travel into the future, we just need to go fast. Really fast. And I think the only way we're ever likely to do that is by going into space.