Astronaut Training Quotes

I have never been to Mars. What will we discover when we get there? A red landscape, quiet horizon, frozen glaciers? Probably all is as beautiful, in its own way, as the Earth was thousands of years ago.

I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.

I'm honored to be recognized among generations of astronauts who were at the forefront of exploring our universe for the benefit of humankind.

You can't 'control' a Mars mission from Earth. The Mars mission is going to have to be controlled by the people on Mars... There is just too much involved that is out of sight of Earth.

If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.

I was inspired by the men who walked on the moon. It really was my inspiration, I think, you know, as a kid of 9 years old - I know I'm dating myself, but - I thought, 'What a cool job!'

Most astronauts are very down-to-earth people. Many of us, three-quarters, have an engineering degree, and we have a very Cartesian, rational approach to things. You don't go and get swept off your feet. That's not your job and that's not why you're hired. So if you get so mesmerized that you forget to do what you're supposed to do, whether it's to open the cargo door of the space shuttle or configure something inside, then you should not be there as a professional operator.

What guy didn't want to be an astronaut growing up?

Most of us at least briefly considered answering, 'An astronaut,' when asked as children what we wanted to be when we grew up.

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

I was with Tom Wolfe at the launch of Apollo 17, which led him to 'The Right Stuff.'

What everyone in the astronaut corps shares in common is not gender or ethnic background, but motivation, perseverance, and desire - the desire to participate in a voyage of discovery.

I was only 8 years old on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong, 38-year-old commander of 'Apollo 11,' descended the cramped lunar module Eagle's ladder with hefty backpack and bulky spacesuit to become the first human on the moon.

Once you get into space, you can really unleash a lot of creativity, but the launch itself? I have been through all of the creative ways, and believe me, chemical rockets are the best.

On Earth, men are seen as superior because of their physical strength, but it means nothing in space, where there is no gravity.

Having walked on the Moon, I know something about what we need to explore, really explore, in space.

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.

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

Chemical propulsion is obsolete to go anywhere other than the moon. Three days - that's acceptable. But for Mars, we need propulsion technologies to get us there in, say, 60 days - then spend whatever length of time we want to spend and return when we want to come home.

I've been approached to do some things with astronauts and the preparation that astronauts go through.

There is a potential to be a big explosion of what spaceflight is gonna mean to just an everyday person in the near future. I think it's very hopeful for our young people: all the exciting things that they could be doing in the future relative to space and space exploration.

We don't have parades for mathematicians, we have parades for astronauts. You don't think about all the thousands of people who worked on that capsule and crunched the numbers and were integral in getting that into space.

The whole Hubble program has just been a fabulous testament to the NASA science community and the NASA astronaut community.

When 'Apollo 13' appeared as an opportunity and I began to tackle that in as authentic a way as I possibly could, I really became enthralled by the philosophical side of space travel and why we need to explore - what it means to us here on Earth - all of those things. I became a huge proponent.