Launch Complex Quotes

An experienced designer with more freedom to act might have realised that there was just too much optimism in the Ares I concept: that a shuttle SRB was simply too small as a first stage for a rocket carrying the relatively heavy Orion spacecraft.

I thought it was going to take a lot more countdowns on the pad. We actually did scrub once, but I figured we'd scrub several times since it's a pretty complicated vehicle.

Large solid rockets have never been a very good way to build launchers that might have crews on top, especially because of the problems in getting the crew away from a failing launcher.

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.

Historically, the U.S.'s big launchers fly seldom enough that their costs are dominated by annual upkeep of facilities and staff, not by the actual cost of each launch. The expensive part is maintaining the launch capability, not actually conducting launches.

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

My first date was with Endeavour, and my last date is going to be with Endeavour, as far as space shuttles are concerned.

Rocket science is tough, and rockets have a way of failing.

Technologically, it is not hard to launch an object into space. Emotionally, it has been difficult.

The reason we chose vertical landing as our recovery architecture is that vertical landing scales really well.