Leroy Chiao Quotes

There are few aspects of everyday life that aren't touched by the technologies developed for space travel.

I just felt that space was the next thing coming in aviation. It was higher, faster. It had the risk.

I've put a lot of my life into making it possible to fly in space at all.

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

With every inch of land on Earth now catalogued by our satellites, the stars are the next place we as a species must travel. And with a booming world population that will hit 9.1 billion in 2050, large-scale space travel may become a necessity.

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.

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.

There is hardly a facet of an Indian citizen that has not been touched by ISRO's technology.

I knew I wanted to be a part of NASA in any case, and so I chose my goals in education to be consistent with working at NASA even as, you know, a scientist.

My expertise is the space program and what it should be in the future based on my experience of looking at the transitions that we've made between pre-Sputnik days and getting to the moon.

All space projects push the frontiers of technology and are drivers of innovation.

As a member of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, I am a firm believer in the American space program.

What I'm trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.

For days after the launch, Sputnik was a wonderful curiosity. A man-made moon visible by ordinary citizens, it inspired awe and pride that humans had finally launched an object into space.

I didn't go into the NASA program to pick up rocks or to go the moon or anything else. I went in there because I was a military officer, and that was the next notch in my profession.

Claiming that solid rockets are necessary for a heavy-lift launcher is obvious nonsense.

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

Lighter computers and lighter sensors would let you have more function in a given weight, which is very important if you are launching things into space, and you have to pay by the pound to put things there.

Anything we can do in the near future that begins to stimulate the interest of people - seeing somebody down the street have an opportunity to go into space - buoys up the whole neighborhood.

It seems that 'rocket scientist' is a job category that's here for the long haul, like 'mortician.' But all this activity masks an important point: rockets are not a terribly efficient way to lift things into space.

I can't think of anything specific growing up that pointed me toward NASA at all. I was interested in the Moon landings just about the same as everyone else of my generation. But I never really thought about being an astronaut or working in space myself.

The years of space flight since the orbiting of Sputnik I back in 1957 had produced many fascinating results, but they had also brought a realization of the many problems that surrounded the use of rockets for space flight.

I personally look forward to building the Orion. I believe that our country needs to pursue that technology.

My dad worked at NASA his whole career; he's a research scientist.

I think it's really a sign of great American strength that we do invest the money we do in technology, in these hard projects, in NASA.