Spacecraft Technology Quotes

The best way to study Mars is with two hands, eyes and ears of a geologist, first at a moon orbiting Mars... and then on the surface.

To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.

We need to spread out now in the universe. I think in 100 years we'll be living on other planets.

Nothing will ever be what the Voyager mission was.

I'm still ready to go to the moon, if they'll take me.

I think it's inevitable that there will be Earthlings establishing a presence on Mars. And I would say that it would certainly take place by 2050 or shortly thereafter.

Cassini is different -- it's a mission of enormous scope and is being conducted in grand style. It is much more sophisticated than Voyager, ... I can't say it's got that flavor of romance, though. Voyager was very romantic. Cassini is spectacular.

The Space Shuttle is the most effective device known to man for destroying dollar bills.

I liked Lost in Space,” Stefan said. “The movie or the TV series?” “The movie? Right. I had forgotten about the movie,” he said soberly. “It was better that way.

I was born in 1960 and can still tell you the name of every astronaut from Mercury to Apollo. If I had a chance, I'd love to go into space on one of the privately developed space crafts.

The only two countries who will be able to launch people into space will be Russia and China. I've seen the Russian technology up close and I've had a chance to look at some of the Chinese technology. It's a very high level. They have good hardware and what China lacks is operational experience. But as they gain more experience, as they fly more missions, they'll catch up quickly. The U.S. does face the possibility of losing the lead in human space flight during this period of what we call the gap.

There are three huge, titanic, space movies which if you ever make a film [about space] you cannot avoid. You may want to avoid them but you cannot. I've never known a genre like it where you are dictated to by these films, 2001, Alien, and Tarkovsky's Solaris.

Target launch date for Falcon I maiden flight is Halloween(October 31) from our island launch complex in the Kwajalein Atoll. For potential customers out there, I should mention that Kwajalein has some of the worlds best scuba diving and snorkeling! It is literally a tropical paradise.

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.

I’m tighter than face lifts and flyer than spaceships.

There is a project that's underway called the interplanetary Internet. It's in operation between Earth and Mars. It's operating on the International Space Station. It's part of the spacecraft that's in orbit around the Sun that's rendezvoused with two planets.

The Shuttle is to space flight what Lindbergh was to commercial aviation.

Planet colonization is not a short term concern of mine. The physical limitations of space travel render it low on the list for me.

To establish human settlements on the Moon, Mars, or in the free-space between, humans will have to again rapidly adapt. Like early pioneers, there will be no nearby friendly merchants or supportive governments to replace that broken tool.

Mars is a long ways away. The moon is only 240,000 miles, but Mars is in the millions. It's too risky without spending more time going to the moon.

The first mission to Mars did not expect to find craters and river valleys, and yet they did. The first mission to Jupiter didn't expect to find ocean worlds and volcano worlds, but they did.

People ask, 'What are the scientific questions you're going to answer?' New Horizons doesn't have any of those; it's purely about raw exploration... We're not 'rewriting the textbook' - we're writing the textbook from scratch.

Armstrong, sitting in the commander's seat, spacesuit on, helmet on, plugged into electrical and environmental umbilical's, is a man who is not only a machine himself in the links of these networks, but is also a man sitting in (what Collins is later to call) a 'mini-cathedral.' a man somewhat more than a pilot, somewhat more than a superpilot, is in fact a veritable high priest of the forces of society and scientific history concentrated in that mini cathedral, a general of the church of the forces of technology.

In the long term, it is desirable that the human race, faced with the prospect of extinction on Earth, should prepare an escape route for itself to another inhabitable planet.