Aerospace Engineering Quotes

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.

Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value.

When I was growing up in Huntsville, Alabama, this is where the space and rocket center was. This is where all of the German rocket scientists came after war and started designing rockets for NASA, for the moon landing and all that.

After the loss of Columbia a couple of years ago, I think we were reminded of the risk. All of us, though, have always known that the Space Shuttle is a very risky vehicle, much more risky than even flying airplanes in combat.

To invent an airplane is nothing. To build one is something. But to fly is everything.

All military and most commercial aircraft use our designs that process power from jet engines.

Had I not become a professional golfer, I think I would have pursued some type of career in aviation.

All the traditional STEM fields, the science, technology, engineering, and math fields, are stoked when you dream big in an agency such as NASA.

Through machinery, man can exert tremendous powers almost as fantastic as if he were the hero of a fairy tale. Through machinery, man can travel with an ever increasing velocity; he can fly through the air and go beneath the surface of the ocean.

Every day, I'm working on my aviation career so that I don't have to think about working as an actor.

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.

When I was a child, and I was at our school, everybody's parents were involved in space program. In every class, we have several kids whose fathers were flown cosmonauts or who prepared for the flight.

We can't start over and develop a Saturn 5-type vehicle from scratch.

I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.

Goddard represented a unique combination of visionary dedication and technological brilliance. He studied physics because he needed physics to get to Mars. In reading the notebooks of Robert Goddard, I am struck by how powerful his exploratory and scientific motivations were - and how influental speculative ideas, even erroneous ones, can be on the shaping of the future.

I'm urging NASA to foster the development of what I call 'runway landers.' No, that's not the name of a high stakes gambler from Vegas. It's a type of spacecraft that flies to orbit like the retiring Shuttles but then glides to a landing like an airplane on a runway. Just like the Shuttles do.

The core of what I do is solve problems, whether that's in graphic engine flow or rockets. I like working on things that are going to have an impact one way or the other.

My brother is about energy. SpaceX is his passion, and I love being a part of that company. Energy is where he spends a lot of his time and thinking in terms of having an impact on the world.

At the end of October 4 in 1957, when I was coming back from sea duty in the South Pacific, Sputnik went up. I realized that humans would be right behind robot aircraft or spacecraft even though I really had no plans of being in aviation or a professional aviator and certainly not in the military.

If we did not have such a thing as an airplane today, we would probably create something the size of N.A.S.A. to make one.

I love the look of planes and the idea of how a plane flies. The more I learn about it the better I feel; while I still may not like it, I have a sense of what is really happening.

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

… to seek employment as a designer of large aircraft.

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

Rocket engines generally are simpler than jet engines, not more complicated.