Richard Branson Quotes

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

When you're in a spacecraft, you need to know what things you can touch and what things you shouldn't touch!

Any astronaut can tell you you've got to do everything you can to learn about your life support system and then do everything you can to take care of it.

Flying in space is risky. It will never be safe, and the best thing we can do is manage those risks. It's important for people, for human beings, to be in space because they're adaptable and because they're not pre-programmed software that can go off and do tasks that are appropriate for machines.

As an astronaut, especially during launch, half of the risk of a six-month flight is in the first nine minutes.

No, I think most astronauts recognize that the space shuttle program is very high-risk, and are prepared for accidents.

Space travel is the only technology that is more dangerous and more expensive now than it was in its first year. Fifty years after Yuri Gagarin, the space shuttle ended up being more dangerous and more expensive to fly than those first throwaway rockets, even though large portions of it were reusable. It's absurd.

I think most astronauts are not risk takers. We take calculated risks for something that we think is worthwhile.

Spacewalking is a little like rock climbing in that everything, including and especially oneself, must be tethered or docked at all times. If you forget to tether a tool, it's gone. Ditto yourself.

After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the things that had gone wrong.

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect.

We are going into space, and we need protection. And in case we need to space walk, we'll have to go outside.

Astronauts have been stuck in low-Earth orbit, boldly going nowhere. American attempts to kick-start a new phase of lunar exploration have stalled amid the realisation that NASA's budget is too small for the job.

I think the people that want to fly in space, who want to work in space, who want to go to station, these people realize that there is a risk inherent to what they do. They understand that there are possible off-nominal situations, dangerous situations in space, and there's no insurance against that.

So most astronauts getting ready to lift off are excited and very anxious and worried about that explosion - because if something goes wrong in the first seconds of launch, there's not very much you can do.

I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I've got kids and responsibilities, so I can't be my own test pilot. That wouldn't be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it's a sensible thing to do.

Astronauts are very professional and when they're preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives.

Our goal is to show that you can develop a robust, safe manned space program and do it at an extremely low cost.

The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident.

We want to make sure we get living astronauts to the surface of Mars.

If you want to go into space first time on a new vehicle that's never been flown, you want to go with a pro.

Every astronaut flew into space for a living. But while NASA has not solved the security problems, I would not put me back into a shuttle - and no other astronaut. The confidence is shaken.

Mars is a long ways away. The moon is only 240,000 miles, but Mars is in the millions. It's too risky without spending more time going to the moon.

If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.

There's a perspective that I've gained as an astronaut that I didn't get from my science activities. In my science activities, I learned by the seat of my pants. Spending 17 years as an astronaut, I learned the NASA formalism of systems engineering as if my life depended on it. Literally.