Space Infrastructure Quotes

If we were to start today on an organized and well-supported space program I believe a practical passenger rocket can be built and tested within ten years.

When it comes to space, I see it as my job, I'm building infrastructure the hard way. I'm using my resources to put in place heavy lifting infrastructure so the next generation of people can have a dynamic, entrepreneurial explosion into space.

Well, we have two major goals. The most important one is to get the station arm on board the station, because that's this really milestone in the space station building since from now on they will be using this arm to continue building the space station.

Do we really need these big, gigantic, heavy rockets? What if we launch a rocket that's empty, and its sole purpose is to act as a source of fuel on the Moon? Who should build that? Well, I think the U.S. should build that.

My view is that we should go back to the moon, build up the infrastructure to make flights there commonplace - be comfortable with it - then use that infrastructure to expand and go to Mars.

When you lower the cost of access to space, a boom of innovation follows, just as low-cost fiber optics paved the way for the Internet and the cloud services that followed.

What's a space elevator? Simply described, it's a thin ribbon, about 3 feet wide and 60 thousand miles long, stretching upwards from the surface of the Earth. The lower end is bolted to a heavy anchor (think of an oil drilling platform), and the top is capped with a counterweight.

I've always wanted to be part of something that would radically change the world. . . . People forget the power of inspiration. All of humanity went to the moon with the Apollo missions. The issue was cost. There was no chance to build a base and create frequent flights. That's the problem I would like to solve.

The future is about wings and wheels and new forms of space transportation, along with our deep-space ambition to set foot on another world in our solar system: Mars. I firmly believe we will establish permanence on that planet. And in reaching for that goal, we can cultivate commercial development of the moon, the asteroid belt, the Red Planet itself and beyond.

NewSpace, commercial space - whatever you want to call it - is rising, with or without government support. It is rising in West Texas and on the Gulf Coast, in California and on the Virginia coast, and rising from the ashes of the old space program in Florida and in small shops and university labs in a hundred places in between.

After assembly complete, when we have a larger crew on orbit, a more complex vehicle, more laboratories and more robot arms, maybe we'll have room for specialists. But right now we don't.

In America, we have no means of getting to our own Space Station. We have to pay the Russians to put our people up there to send them into space - rendezvous with the Station and bring them back at the end of their stay, and that to me is just wrong. We're supposed to be the world's greatest space-faring nation, and to cancel our own means of getting there I thought was a mistake, even though it would save some money.

It is despairing to consider that the cost and reliability of access to space have barely changed since the Apollo era over three decades ago. Yet in virtually every other field of technology, we have made great strides in reducing cost and increasing capability.

You cannot make a giant space company in your dorm room. Not today. And the reason is that the heavy lifting infrastructure isn't in place.

I don't like to camp. Early on, Mars is going to be camping. I think there are people far better suited to do that than me. But when the first Holiday Inn Express shows up, maybe I'll go.

We should have stayed on the moon. We should have made moon the base, instead of building space stations, which are fragile and which fly apart.

We continue to not only operate the International Space Station but to increase its capabilities as well as commercial contributions.

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

There should be an international lunar base. That is certainly doable.

I think I need to continue to think and plan and marry all of the different things that we could do that make transportation in space from the earth to the space station, from the earth to the moon to space stations around the moon to visiting an asteroid.

Nightside, cities glistened in chains, and a spray of tinkertoy habitats girdled the planet. Gossamer starbridges reached from the equator towards orbit.

When the time comes to start building deep space transports and refueling rocket tankers, it will be the commercial industry that steps up, not another government-owned, government-managed enterprise.

A factory that can turn carbon nanotubes into a sheet a yard wide and long enough to stretch one-fourth of the way to the moon is not something you'll find at your local industrial park. That's the show-stopper for the space elevator. The ribbon.

The communications industry has been tremendously successful, but we need to build the railroads and the oil wells and the gold mines of space.

If there's going to be the development of a commercial space economy, whatever it is, shouldn't you do your exploration to prepare a path for what's going to come next?