Space Flight Quotes

Of course risk is part of spaceflight. We accept some of that to achieve greater goals in exploration and find out more about ourselves and the universe.

Lisa Nowak

Safety, Goal, Risk

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To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature-could one dream of anything more?

Yuri Gagarin

Dream, Cosmos, Firsts

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I'm coming back in... and it's the saddest moment of my life.

Edward Higgins White

Moments, Coming Back, Star Gazing

"Fictional character: Ed White". "From the Earth to the Moon", www.imdb.com. 1998.

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Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.

Buzz Aldrin

Vision, Exploration, Century

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History will remember the twentieth century for two technological developments: atomic energy and space flight.

Neil Armstrong

Future, Technological Development, Two

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With our present knowledge, we can respond to the challenge of stellar space flight solely with intellectual concepts and purely hypothetical analysis. Hardware solutions are still entirely beyond our reach and far, far away.

Wernher von Braun

Future, Challenges, Intellectual

Wernher Von Braun (1969). “Space Frontier”

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The single simplest reason why human space flight is necessary is this, stated as plainly as possible: keeping all your breeding pairs in one place is a retarded way to run a species.

Warren Ellis

Running, Way, Pairs

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That whole day [ of the space flight] is very vividly impressed on my memory because it was such a new experience. We hadn't done that before. And then I've recalled it so often since then I think that it's a - it's remained very vivid over the past 50 years, seems to me like about a week or two instead of 50 years.

John Glenn

Memories, Past, Thinking

Source: www.npr.org

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

Arthur C. Clarke

Moon, Aviation, Star Gazing

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I would say keep supporting space flight, keep telling the public and the politicians why it's important to advance science and explore the galaxy. I encourage the Japanese to keep doing what they're doing.

Leroy Chiao

Important, Politician, Galaxy

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I am convinced that of all the people on the two sides of the great curtain, the space pilots are the least likely to hate each other. Like the late Erich von Holst, I believe that the tremendous and otherwise not quite explicable public interest in space flight arises from the subconscious realization that it helps to preserve peace. May it continue to do so!

Konrad Lorenz

Hate, Believe, Space

Konrad Lorenz (2002). “On Aggression”, p.273, Psychology Press

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I'll tell you, being involved in human space flight, it is an emotional endeavor. I think it brings in the highest highs and the lowest lows.

Ellen Ochoa

Emotional, Thinking, Lows

"Exploring Space, Unearthing Human Emotions". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. July 13, 2011.

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For the last several years and culminating in six months in orbit next year, I've been training for my third space flight. This one is almost in a category completely different than the previous two, specifically to live in on the space station for six months, to command a space ship and to fly a new rocket ship.

Chris Hadfield

Years, Two, Training

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To allow public access to orbit, we would need breakthroughs that would lower the cost by a lot more than an order of magnitude and increase safety by a factor of 100 as compared to every launch system used since the first manned space flight. I think airborne launch will be a significant part of the safety solution.

Burt Rutan

Thinking, Space, Order

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Basically, most good science in space flight has to do with the behavior of the human body in space. That is where we are lacking info, and where info can only be obtained by flying in space.

Charles Simonyi

Flying, Body, Behavior

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In this age of space flight, when we use the modern tools of science to advance into new regions of human activity, the Bible... remains in every way an up-to-date book. Our knowledge and use of the laws of nature that enable us to fly to the Moon also enable us to destroy our home planet with the atom bomb. Science itself does not address the question whether we should use the power at our disposal for good or for evil. The guidelines of what we ought to do are furnished in the moral law of God.

Wernher von Braun

Bible, Christian, Book

"Phillips' Book of Great Thoughts & Funny Sayings". Book by Bob Phillips, 1993.

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I am excited to think that the development of commercial capabilities to send humans into low Earth orbit will likely result in so many more Earthlings being able to experience the transformative power of space flight.

Buzz Aldrin

Thinking, Orbit, Development

"NASA's Far-Out New Plans", February 02, 2010.

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I think that space flight is a condition of Nature that comes into effect when an intelligent species reaches the saturation point of its planetary habitat combined with a certain level of technological ability... I think it is a built-in gene-directed drive for the spreading of the species and its continuation.

Donald A. Wollheim

Intelligent, Thinking, Space

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NASA was going to pick a public school teacher to go into space, observe and make a journal about the space flight, and I am a teacher who always dreamed of going up into space.

Christa McAuliffe

Teacher, School, Nasa

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What I'm trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.

Elon Musk

Differences, Trying, Helping

"U.S., China, Russia, Elon Musk: Entrepreneur's "insane" vision becomes reality". Interview with Scott Pelley, www.cbsnews.com. May 22, 2012.

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We collectively have a special place in our heart for the manned space flight program - Apollo nostalgia is one element, but that is only part of it. American culture worships explorers - look at the fame of Lewis and Clark, for example. The American people want to think of themselves as supporting exploration.

Nathan Myhrvold

Heart, Thinking, People

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Space flights are merely an escape, a fleeing away from oneself, because it is easier to go to Mars or to the moon than it is to penetrate one's own being.

Carl Jung

Inspirational, Moon, Fleeing

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I believe that the time has arrived for medical investigation of the problems of manned rocket flight, for it will not be the engineering problems but rather the limits of the human frame that will make the final decision as to whether manned space flight will eventually become a reality.

Wernher von Braun

Believe, Reality, Medicine

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By the way, Japan is also known to be actively engaged in manned space flights as part of the International Space Station.

Vladimir Putin

Japan, Way, International

Source: www.rt.com

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As Jeremy Bentham had asked about animals well over two hundred years ago, the question was not whether they could reason or talk, but could they suffer? And yet, somehow, it seemed to take more imagination for humans to identify with animal suffering than it did to conceive of space flight or cloning or nuclear fusion. Yes, she was a fanatic in the eyes of most of the country. . .Mostly, however, she just lacked patience for people who wouldn't accept her belief that humans inflicted needless agony on the animals around them, and they did so in numbers that were absolutely staggering.

Chris Bohjalian

Country, Eye, Animal

FaceBook post by Chris Bohjalian from Nov 15, 2013

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