Astronaut Selection Quotes

Astronauts are inherently insane. And really noble.

It takes a few years to prepare for a space mission.

I was only a hero by default. The flights were few and far between. There weren't that many astronauts. The moon flights were so interesting and exciting.

Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket - half a million dollars. It can be done.

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

In 1960-61, a small group of female pilots went through many of the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts and scored very well on them - in fact, better than some of the astronauts did.

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

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.

A man is a fabulous nuisance in space right now. He's not worth all the cost of putting him up there and keeping him comfortable and working.

NASA has never had a problem finding capable people to be astronauts. NASA's problem was, and still is, finding ways to cut the list of capable applicants down to a manageable length.

The opportunities to become an astronaut in Canada were far and few.

I loved being a test pilot, and so being an astronaut was - was not my end point in, you know, either I achieved success by being an astronaut, or if I don't get picked, I'm not successful. I loved my career as a pilot, and it was a bonus to be selected as an astronaut.

The biggest honor is to be an astronaut. It's such a tremendous privilege to be able to represent humankind in our quest to explore space.

I don't like being alone, so I want to share these experiences and things with as many people as possible, so that is why I choose to go to the Moon with artists!

It took me a long time to get selected as an astronaut. In fact, I applied for 20 years before I was selected.

Am I willing to go to Mars? Yes, but I'm not willing to spend nine months getting there, then wait 18 more months until the planets align to come home.

I ran the astronaut school for six years, and I was the commandant and when I finished in '65, 26 of my guys went into space as NASA astronauts that I trained.

In 1983, NASA invited Canada to fly three payload specialists, in part because we had contributed the robotic arm that is used on the shuttle.

My odyssey to become an astronaut kind of started in grad school, and I was working, up at MIT, in space robotics-related work; human and robot working together.

I did not think my chances were very big when I saw some of the other men who were competing for the team. They were a good group, and I had a lot of respect for them. But I decided to give it the old school try and to take some of NASA's tests.

Not until the space shuttle started flying did NASA concede that some astronauts didn't have to be fast-jet pilots. And at that point, sure enough, women started becoming astronauts.

Our focus is to get citizen astronauts to experience the 'overview effect,' return to Earth, and then impact their communities.

The flight crew for the orbital mission has been picked, and I'm not on it. Of course I've been feeling pretty low for the past few days. All of us are mad because Glenn was picked.

Two months after I got out of test pilot school, I saw an advert that said NASA was recruiting more astronauts. The best job you could have as a test pilot was being an astronaut, so I volunteered.

So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight.