Space Shuttle Quotes

• The launch of a space shuttle can still make you weep with amazement and wonder, if you happen to be watching it.

  Hanna Rosin

  Space, Wonder, Amazement

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• The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident.

  Sally Ride

  Space, Rockets, Accidents

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• 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.

  Sally Ride

  Space, Safety, Gone

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• The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.

  Ronald Reagan

  Goodbye, Morning, Journey

  The Space Shuttle "Challenger" Tragedy Address, delivered 28 January 1986

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• By 1931, after a few years' experience of flying scheduled airlines, those planes were operating at roughly 600 times the safety of the space shuttle. I look at safety not in terms of fatalities per passenger-mile, but when you get in and close the door, what is the risk of dying on this flight?

  Burt Rutan

  Doors, Years, Space

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• The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives.

  Ronald Reagan

  Space, Surly, Crew

  The Space Shuttle "Challenger" Tragedy Address, delivered 28 January 1986

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• I think the Space Shuttle is worth one billion dollars a launch. I think that it is worth two billion dollars for what it does. I think the Shuttle is worth it for the work it does.

  Pete Conrad

  Thinking, Two, Space

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• Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it seems to make things harder, leaving us with fifty-button remote controls, digital cameras with hundreds of mysterious features and book-length manuals, and cars with dashboard systems worthy of the space shuttle.

  James Surowiecki

  Book, Technology, Space

  "Feature Presentation". www.newyorker.com. May 28, 2007.

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• For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Inspirational, Nature, Science

  Rogers Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident appendix (1986)

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• The thing I'll remember most about the flight is that it was fun. In fact, I'm sure it was the most fun that I'll ever have in my life.

  Sally Ride

  Fun, Space, Facts

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• The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.

  George W. Bush

  Home, Science, Safety

  The Space Shuttle "Columbia" Tragedy Speech to the Nation, delivered 1 February 2003, White House Cabinet Room

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• The pressure suit helps if something goes wrong during launch or re-entry - astronauts have a way to parachute off the shuttle. The suits protect you from loss of pressure in case of emergency.

  Sally Ride

  Loss, Suits, Way

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• But technology is the real skin of our species. Humanity, correctly seen in the context of the last five hundred years, is an extruder of technological material. We take in matter that has a low degree of organization; we put it through mental filters, and we extrude jewelry, gospels, space shuttles. This is what we do. We are like coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psychic objects. All our tool making implies our belief in an ultimate tool. That tool is the flying saucer, or the soul, exteriorized in three-dimensional space.

  Terence McKenna

  Real, Technology, Animal

  Terence McKenna (1998). “True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival”, M J F Books

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• Well, with so many space shuttle missions that we've done, I think it's just sort of natural that each one hasn't necessarily gotten the attention that the early ones did.

  Ellen Ochoa

  Thinking, Space, Attention

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

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• I think both the space shuttle program and the International Space Station program have not really lived up to their expectations.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Thinking, Space, Expectations

  "A Mission To Mars". Interview with David Levin, www.pbs.org. November 18, 2010.

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• In my mind I needed a symbol of today's technology, and I realized that what I wanted to photograph was the Space Shuttle. And so that's where Places of Power came into being.

  John Sexton

  Photography, Technology, Space

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• I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.

  Sally Ride

  Space, Floating, Flight

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• The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn't even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we'd never have had the light bulb.

  Elon Musk

  Light, Space, Goal

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• On a standard space shuttle crew, two of the astronauts have a test pilot background - the commander and the pilot.

  Sally Ride

  Two, Space, Pilots

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• NASA asked me to create meals for the space shuttle. Thai chicken was the favorite. I flew in a fake space shuttle, but I have no desire to go into space after seeing the toilet.

  Rachael Ray

  Space, Fake, Desire

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• Then during the mission itself, I used the space shuttle's robot arm to release a satellite into orbit.

  Sally Ride

  Hands, Space, Orbit

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• When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.

  Sally Ride

  Cutting, Views, Space

  "Sally Ride, First American Woman In Space, Is Dead". "All Things Considered", nhpr.org. July 23, 2012.

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• Space travel is the only technology that is more dangerous and more expensive now than it was in its first year. Fifty years after Yuri Gagarin, the space shuttle ended up being more dangerous and more expensive to fly than those first throwaway rockets, even though large portions of it were reusable. It's absurd.

  Burt Rutan

  Technology, Years, Space

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• The Space Shuttle will stop directly below the Space Station and Sergei and I will be looking out two different windows looking straight down at the Space Shuttle.

  John L. Phillips

  Two, Space, Different

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• Modern neuroimaging is like asking an astronaut in the space shuttle to look out the window and judge how America is doing.

  David Eagleman

  Space, America, Judging

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain”, p.140, Canongate Books

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