Space Accidents Quotes

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.

After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the things that had gone wrong.

Ironically, it is only when disaster strikes that the shuttle makes the headlines. Its routine flights attracted less media interest than unmanned probes to the planets or the images from the Hubble Telescope. The fate of Columbia (like that of Challenger in 1986) reminded us that space is still a hazardous environment.

No, I think most astronauts recognize that the space shuttle program is very high-risk, and are prepared for accidents.

I think the people that want to fly in space, who want to work in space, who want to go to station, these people realize that there is a risk inherent to what they do. They understand that there are possible off-nominal situations, dangerous situations in space, and there's no insurance against that.

Since the Columbia accident, the Russian space agency, or the Russian space program, has been literally carrying the load bringing us all the supplies we need on the Progress vehicle, smaller amounts on the Soyuz vehicles.

Putting a man on the moon united our nation in victory and we've collectively mourned through tragedies such as Apollo 1, the Challenger and Columbia.

I've been doing a few interviews since the loss of the SpaceX Dragon on its way to the Space Station. Each one very quickly questions the viability of what they call commercial space in light of the failure. I tell them space is hard: this is what happens early in a program with new technology.

Nothing would make me happier if people got curious enough to actually go online to and start looking and researching the Apollo 1 fire... That would be amazing to me if people would actually go through the trouble to figure that stuff out.