Alan G. Poindexter Quotes

The excitement really didn't start to build until the trailer - which was carrying me, with a space suit with ventilation and all that sort of stuff - pulled up to the launch pad.

When you launch in a rocket, you're not really flying that rocket. You're just sort of hanging on.

I wanted to get superimposed on a shuttle launch.

You need nerves of steel if climbing aboard a rocket is your career path.

I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. I grew up in Houston. Gordo Cooper was my favorite astronaut.

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

Past experience, on the shuttle and the Titan rockets, suggests that large multi-segment solid rockets have a probability of failure of 0.5 to 1 per cent.

One day, people will be able to buy tickets to visit space.

So, whenever Scooter was the Pilot, he never had a chance to fly the orbiter. So, the joke is: I'm going to have a chance to fly it first and hand it over to him.

When you're getting ready to launch into space, you're sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen.

The president felt that it was important to send an ordinary citizen to experience the excitement of space travel as a representative for all Americans.

Since the age of 6, I've always wanted to go to space.

Then, much later, my next dream was to become an astronaut, and I was fortunate to realize that dream, also.

A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward space travel.

I'm not going into infinity. I'm going into low earth orbit.

I've had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.

I had pretty much done it all before I went into space. So when the opportunity came, I went along. It was that simple.

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

The truth is, every single rocket launch off of planet Earth is risky.

I thought I was prepared for space, and it still absolutely defied every expectation and dream. It is an incredible thing to put yourself on a rocket and launch off the planet. It is an amazing thing to see the planet from space. This blue sphere is almost indescribably beautiful.

The rockets light! The shuttle leaps off the launch pad in a cloud of steam and a trail of fire.

In the press grandstand where I watched Discovery rise against the cloudless sky, the media hit the abort button on cynicism. The Earth shook to the sounds of man, three miles away. The candle lit. . . only someone stripped of awe can leave a launch untouched.

Roger, liftoff, and the clock is started.

Unless you have manned [space] travel, you don't stir the imagination of people.

Five – four – three – two – one