Ellen Stofan Quotes

The space program needs a goal, and the goal should be humans to Mars.

My key aim is to get man on the surface of Mars by the mid-2030s.

I would suspect strongly that over a period of time, if we put our mind to going to Mars, it will be a consortium of several countries.

Exploring Mars is a far different venture from Apollo expeditions to the moon; it necessitates leaving our home planet on lengthy missions with a constrained return capability.

By refocusing our space program on Mars for America's future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it's time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface.

'The Martian' may be fiction, but at NASA, we are working to make it a reality.

Every day, we get a little bit closer to the kind of expertise and the kind of experience we're going to need to go there. I'd love to be the guy walking on Mars.

I don't go along with going to Moon first to build a launch pad to go to Mars. We should go to Mars from Earth orbit. We have already been to the Moon; we've already practiced.

I think that somebody with the resources and innovation and the idea is going to come out of nowhere and come up with a successful space travel program.

Back in the days of Apollo, sending humans to the moon was the only viable way to get the scientific data we wanted. But now, with our computer and robotics technology, there's very little an astronaut can do on Mars that a well-designed rover can't.

The Chinese are planning a manned mission to the moon sometime after 2020, and subsequently, to Mars. The U.S. has abandoned that dream.

I was thinking as a little girl growing up that I would be there. When I look at whether we can go to Mars, it's definitely something we can do.

I'm trying to get to Mars before everyone else.

When I was a kid, I was reliably informed that we'd have gone to Mars by 1985, and of course it's 2012, and we're still really no closer to a human expedition to Mars, but that shouldn't detract from the amazing achievements that are being done on a day-to-day basis by robotic envoys.

People will visit Mars, they will settle mars, and we should because it's cool.

Going to Mars would make NASA great again.

I think a Moon base is not necessary to get to Mars, but I think it will be helpful. It would give you a chance to develop and mature some systems; long duration, deep space stuff; and you're close enough to get some help, via radio from Earth.

We constantly learn new lessons up here. The experiences we gather will enable us to establish a long-term station on the moon and to go on to Mars.

I'm in favor of changing the destination of humans. There are a lot of manned missions that can be done, but not in the direction of the moon.

Every couple of years, we could dispatch people from Earth to Mars.

I was motivated to improve the U.S. strategy of going back to the moon in 1985. That's a long time ago. Going back to the moon would be a great achievement for tourism adventure flights.

During my 8 years as chairman, I had the privilege to peer into the future to see dynamic citizen astronauts returning to and from the heavens which we can expect in the future.

Britain should definitely be part of a Mars mission.

If the United States commits to the goal of reaching Mars, it will almost certainly do so in reaction to the progress of other nations - as was the case with NASA, the Apollo program, and the project that became the International Space Station.

The space program is a peaceful project. The next door is opening. We have to go farther into space. But, before that, we need to develop far more improved nutrition and more advanced spacecraft.