Spaceflight 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

  Space Flight, Safety, Goal

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• It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

  Alan Shepard

  Space, Government, Safety

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• Once you've been in space, you appreciate how small and fragile the Earth is.

  Valentina Tereshkova

  Appreciation, Space, Appreciate

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• If people can see Earth from up here, see it without those borders, see it without any differences in race or religion, they would have a completely different perspective. Because when you see it from that angle, you cannot think of your home or your country. All you can see is one Earth...

  Anousheh Ansari

  Country, Home, Thinking

  "Memories Of The Earth As Seen From Space" by Brandon Keim, www.wired.com. April 20, 2007.

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• At no time, when the astronauts were in space were they alone, there was a constant surveillance by UFOs.

  Scott Carpenter

  Space, Surveillance, Astronaut

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• I think the people who experienced the Apollo missions came away from that experience wondering to themselves, 'When can we get a chance to experience spaceflight?' I've heard that many, many times: that people got into a new career field hoping that they would be able to experience spaceflight.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Thinking, Careers, People

  "Expert testimony on the space age". Q&A with Alan Boyle, www.nbcnews.com. July 19, 2004.

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• If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on.

  Sheryl Sandberg

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• I think we need someone in a responsible political position to have the courage to say, 'Let's terminate human spaceflight.'

  James Van Allen

  Thinking, Political, Needs

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• Spaceflight isn't just about doing experiments, it's about an extension of human culture.

  Chris Hadfield

  Culture, Humans, Experiments

  Source: www.slate.com

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• In a dispassionate comparison of the relative values of human and robotic spaceflight, the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure. But only a tiny number of Earth's six billion inhabitants are direct participants. For the rest of us, the adventure is vicarious and akin to that of watching a science fiction movie. At the end of the day, I ask myself whether the huge national commitment of technical talent to human spaceflight and the ever-present potential for the loss of precious human life are really justifiable.

  James Van Allen

  Motivation, Adventure, Commitment

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• I want manned spaceflight, not just back to the Moon, but beyond that. And I want my daughters and my son to have their own July 20, 1969, to remember. Apollo 11 didn't give us wings; it only showed us how far the wings we had would take us.

  David Weber

  Mother, Daughter, Son

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• Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily.

  Gene Kranz

  Should Have, Safety, Design

  Gene Kranz (2009). “Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond”, p.204, Simon and Schuster

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• We're working to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go and so that we humans can better continue exploring the solar system. Accomplishing this mission will take time, and we're working on it methodically.

  Jeff Bezos

  Land, People, Cost

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• Since Yuri Gagarin and Al Shepard's epoch flights in 1961, all space missions have been flown only under large, expensive government efforts. By contrast, our program involves a few, dedicated individuals who are focused entirely on making spaceflight affordable.

  Burt Rutan

  Government, Space, Effort

  "Private spacecraft blast offs June 21" by Leonard David, www.cnn.com. June 2, 2004.

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• With any luck, by the time NASA's space probe hits Pluto, you'll be booking a spaceflight with a privately run suborbital airline.

  Burt Rutan

  Running, Space, Luck

  "After the X Prize". www.wired.com. December 1, 2004.

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• Spaceflight is nothing less than the exterior metaphor for the shamanic voyage. In other words, in our terms, the hallucinogenic experience. This is the way engineers get high. They go to the moon!

  Terence McKenna

  Moon, Getting High, Voyages

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• Everyone who's been in space would, I'm sure, welcome the opportunity for a return to the exhilarating experiences there. For me, a flight in a shuttle, though most satisfying, would be anticlimactic after my flight to the moon. Plus, if I pursued a flight myself, people would think that was the reason I am trying to generate interest in public spaceflight. And that's not the purpose - I want to generate interest in long-range space exploration.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Moon, Opportunity, Thinking

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

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• There's a tremendously satisfying freedom associated with weightlessness. It's challenging in the absence of traction or leverage, and it requires thoughtful readjustment. I found the experience of weightlessness to be one of the most fun and enjoyable, challenging and rewarding, experiences of spaceflight. Returning to Earth brings with it a great sense of heaviness, and a need for careful movement. In some ways it's not too different from returning from a rocking ocean ship.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Fun, Ocean, Thoughtful

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

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• Achieving something that has never existed in manned spaceflight and that is high volume and public access.

  Burt Rutan

  Achieve, Volume, Access

  Source: bigthink.com

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• My position is that it is high time for a calm debate on more fundamental questions. Does human spaceflight continue to serve a compelling cultural purpose and/or our national interest? Or does human spaceflight simply have a life of its own, without a realistic objective that is remotely commensurate with its costs? Or, indeed, is human spaceflight now obsolete?

  James Van Allen

  Doe, Purpose, Cost

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• I’m struck again by the irony that spaceflight-conceived in the cauldron of nationalist rivalries and hatreds-brings with it a stunning transnational vision. You spend even a little time contemplating the Earth from orbit and the most deeply engrained nationalisms begin to erode. They seem the squabbles of mites on a plum.

  Carl Sagan

  Hatred, Vision, Earth

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.199, Ballantine Books

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• A hybrid human-robot mission to investigate an asteroid affords a realistic opportunity to demonstrate new technological capabilities for future deep-space travel and to test spacecraft for long-duration spaceflight.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Opportunity, Space, Long

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• As I'm sure you may know, I'm planning to become a spaceflight participant and have been recently approved to begin my spaceflight training by the Russian space federation having passed the necessary medical and physical tests.

  Sarah Brightman

  Space, Training, May

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• If NASA is to reach beyond the Moon and someday reach Mars, it must be relieved of the burden of launching people and cargo to low earth orbit. To do that, we must invest more in commercial spaceflight.

  Bill Nye

  Moon, People, Orbit

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• I would not say that female cosmonauts are not welcomed in the Russian space program. I must say, however, that all spaceflight hardware, including spacesuits and spacecraft comfort assuring systems, were designed mostly by men and for men.

  Valentina Tereshkova

  Men, Space, Comfort

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