Launch Vehicles Quotes

I think it's good to have competition. Now we have a third country that can launch astronauts, so it's good for all of us. It makes us a little bit more competitive and wanting to be the leader.

You need propellants to accelerate toward Mars, then to decelerate at Mars, again to re-accelerate from Mars to Earth, and finally to decelerate back at Earth. Accordingly, the mass of these required propellants, in short, drives our need for innovative launch vehicles.

To me, we have never really exploited our ability in low-Earth orbit.

Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.

Having a diverse suite of U.S.-manned spaceflight systems to access space is inherently robust.

The key virtue of orbital assembly is that it eliminates the tight connection between the size of the expedition and the size of the rockets used to launch it.

The strategic objective of New Shepard is to practice, and a lot of the subcomponents of New Shepard actually get directly reused on the second stage of New Glenn.

The Russians had got a real head-start into space; America was playing catch-up.

As we begin to have landings on the moon, we can alternate those with vertical launch of similar crew modules on similar launch vehicles for vertical-launch tourism in space, if you want to call it that... adventure travel.

It would be sad if the expertise built up during the 40 years of the U.S. and Russian manned programmes were allowed to dissipate. But abandoning the shuttle, and committing to new launch vehicles and propulsion systems, is actually a prerequisite for a vibrant manned programme.