Nasa Quotes - Page 3

• The Al Gore movie cashed in on his personality and the question of where he had been in the six years since his failed US presidential bid. The same movie starring any NASA scientist would have lost money.

  Randy Olson

  Personality, Presidential, Scientist

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds.

  Sally Ride

  Backgrounds

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• Within NASA, the shuttle is perhaps the least-groundbreaking project. Recall that Apollo was about creating brand-new technologies that did something unprecedented - putting men on the moon. The shuttle is, by comparison, a relic designed to make going into orbit routine.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Moon, Technology, Men

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• Bopha, Sandy, floods in Pakistan, droughts in China… How many reports from the likes of the World Bank, NASA and the International Energy Agency will it take? How many preventable catastrophes until our leaders realize that climate change will not be solved by nice speeches and empty promises? Countries like Canada and the U.S. have promised to reduce their greenhouse gas pollution and provide adequate financial support for developing countries, they have so far failed on both counts.

  Steven Guilbeault

  Country, Nice, Agency

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• And so, I was not a military test pilot, but as soon as NASA expressed an interest in flying scientists and people who were not military test pilots, that was an epiphany that just came like a stroke of lightning.

  Story Musgrave

  Military, People, Flying

  "NASA Distinguished Service Medal". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. May 22, 1997.

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• NASA might do well to adopt the Red Bull approach to branding and astronautics. Suddenly the man in the spacesuit is not an underpaid civil servant; he's the ultimate extreme athlete. Red Bull knows how to make space hip.

  Mary Roach

  Athlete, Men, Space

  Mary Roach (2011). “Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void”, p.252, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Culture change takes time, and NASA's culture is definitely improving. Based on its success, the change method is now being taken to each center agency-wide.

  Tom Krause

  Taken, Agency, Culture

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• Intelligent beings from other planets regularly visit our world in an effort to enter into contact with us. NASA and the American government know this and possess a great deal of evidence. Nevertheless, they remain silent in order not to alarm people. I am dedicated to forcing the authorities to end their silence.

  Gordon Cooper

  Intelligent, Order, Our World

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• The news media reported the $250 million as an unthinkably huge waste of money and proclaimed that something was wrong with NASA. The result was an investigation and a congressional hearing. Not to defend failure, but $250 million is not much more than the cost to produce Kevin Costner's film flop Waterworld.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Media, Cost, News

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• NASA's training philosophy is "no surprises." So what they did is put a simulator on Earth where it looks exactly the same as a shuttle toilet and they put a camera down in the bottom of the opening for solid-waste collection, with a light that basically illuminates your asshole.

  Mike Mullane

  Philosophy, Light, Training

  Source: www.menshealth.com

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• As Stewart Brand (co-founder of Emeryville's Global Business Network) likes to say, "Information lasts forever. Digital information lasts forever or for five years, whichever comes first." There are examples everywhere. The tapes from the original Viking landers that went to Mars are at (NASA's) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but there is no machine that can read the tapes.

  Paul Saffo

  Years, Forever, Machines

  Source: www.sfgate.com

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• I talked to Katherine Johnson, and I tried to make it weighty by asking things like, "How as a Black woman did you do your work in NASA? They were misogynistic, and I'm sure you got called the n-word." She was just like, "Well, that was the way it was. I just did my job. I wanted to do my job." She was just so humble.

  Taraji P. Henson

  Humble, Black, Black Women

  Source: www.hollywood.com

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• It was in the back of my mind, even while I was going to school, but it wasn't until I was at university studying engineering that I thought, well what do I really want to do? And I kind of came back to that and I said, well the degrees I'm trying to get are going to qualify me to apply. And so, that's what I did after I finished my, or after I was getting my doctorates. That's when I first applied to NASA.

  Leroy Chiao

  School, Mind, Trying

  Source: bigthink.com

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• The space station mission was kind of the culmination of all of my experience of being a NASA Astronaut, so it had brought all of my previous experience into play. I had to learn the Russian language to a fluent level so that I could function as the co-pilot of the Soyuz Spacecraft that we flew up and back from the space station. And then the challenge of being the Commander of the whole expedition, a six and a-half month flight aboard the international space station. I felt the burden of the whole mission on my shoulders, which was fine, and fortunately everything did go well.

  Leroy Chiao

  Challenges, Language, Kind

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I attended a big human space flight conference in Beijing and I was going as myself. And really, there weren't any NASA astronauts there, I was the only so-called American Astronaut there. We had astronauts from most of the other countries, certainly from Russia, from France, from Japan, several other countries, but it was a little bit odd because here we are at an international gathering of a lot of astronauts and I'm talking about somewhere upwards of 30 or so astronauts, and I'm the only American. And I wasn't even there in an official capacity.

  Leroy Chiao

  Country, Flight, Odd

  Source: bigthink.com

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• The Russians have been flying long duration crews since the early '70's. And in the early days, they've ended at least two missions early because of conflicts within the crew. So, they learned early on the importance of studying this and making sure you put the right crew together. Since we began our work together on the International Space station with the Russians in the early 2000's, NASA has started to learn the importance of this kind of work. And so, I think it's important work and we are not fully onboard and recognize it as important.

  Leroy Chiao

  Thinking, Long, Flying

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed, schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support them, then so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Government, Safety, Support

  Richard P. Feynman (2011). “"What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character”, p.253, W. W. Norton & Company

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• When NASA makes discoveries they are profound and they make headlines, everyone takes notice. It drives dialogue and, today, it would drive the blogosphere. It would drive the projects the kids do in school. So you wouldn't even need programs to try and stimulate curiosity. You wouldn't need programs to try to convince people that science literacy is good. Because they're going to want to participate on this epic adventure that we call space exploration.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  School, Adventure, Kids

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• NASA was invented as a response to Cold War steps. There are those who presumed that we went to the moon because we're explorers. We went to the moon because we were at war with the Soviet Union. And so when it became clear that they (Soviet Union) were not going to the moon, we're done with the moon.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  War, Moon, Unions

  "Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson on Writing, Mars, Curiosity, and the Higgs Boson". Interview With Sandra Kitt, aalbc.com. January 1, 2013.

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• I will free NASA from the restriction of serving primarily as a logistics agency for low-earth orbit activity.

  Donald Trump

  Agency, Orbit, Earth

  "Donald Trump’s campaign has become one big airing of grievances" by Aaron Blake, www.washingtonpost.com. October 27, 2016.

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• Eventually private enterprise will be able to send people into orbit, but I suspect initially it's going to have to be with NASA's help. Whether it's going to be a consortium or one entity remains to be seen. I could be wrong. I could be one of the old fogies! Rocket science is tough, and rockets have a way of failing. It happens. A company has to be willing to bear the risk of its rocket failing. It's a very large capital investment.

  Sally Ride

  People, Risk, Able

  Interview with Jim Clash, www.askmen.com.

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• Challenger was lost because NASA came to believe its own propaganda. The agency's deeply impacted cultural hubris had it that technology-engineering-would always triumph over random disaster if certain rules were followed. The engineers-turned-technocrats could not bring themselves to accept the psychology of machines with abandoning the core principle of their own faith: equations, geometry, and repetition-physical law, precision design, and testing-must defy chaos.

  William E. Burrows

  Believe, Technology, Agency

  William E. Burrows (2010). “This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age”, p.560, Modern Library

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• We finally know where the red line for climate really is. After the rapid melt of arctic ice in the summer of 2007, our best scientists, led by NASA's Jim Hansen, went back to work and produced a series of papers showing that with more than 350 ppm (parts per million) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we couldn't have a planet "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted."

  Bill McKibben

  Summer, Ice, Civilization

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• As a youngster, I read of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. As a student, I wrote English reports on science fiction. And as a fighter pilot, I observed the selection of the Mercury astronauts. All this was fascinating, but I really didn't think I would ever be a part of it. It was only when my good friend Ed White was selected as a Gemini astronaut that I decided to join NASA as part of the Apollo program.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Good Friend, Thinking, White

  Scholastic Interview, teacher.scholastic.com. November 17, 1998.

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• Returning to the Moon with NASA astronauts is not the best usage of our resources. Because OUR resources should be directed to outward, beyond-the-moon, to establishing habitation and laboratories on the surface of Mars that can be built, assembled, from the close-by moons of Mars.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Moon, Mars, Astronaut

  "Buzz Aldrin: America Needs to Set its Sights on Mars" by Robert Montenegro, bigthink.com.

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