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Spaceflight Quotes

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Spaceflight Quotes

“One consequence of this train of argument is that, even if civilizations commonly arise on planets throughout the Galaxy, few of them will be both long-lived and nontechnological. Since hazards from asteroids and comets must apply to inhabited planets all over the Galaxy, if there are such, intelligent beings everywhere will have to unify their home worlds politically, leave their planets, and move small nearby worlds around. Their eventual choice, as ours, is spaceflight or extinction.”

EarthPale Blue DotSpaceflightCarl Sagan
Book:Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
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“The scope and audacity of John Kennedy’s May 25, 1961, message to a joint session of Congress on “Urgent National Needs”—the speech that launched the Apollo program—dazzled me. We would use rockets not yet designed and alloys not yet conceived, navigation and docking schemes not yet devised, in order to send a man to an unknown world—a world not yet explored, not even in a preliminary way, not even by robots—and we would bring him safely back, and we would do it before the decade was over. This confident pronouncement was made before any American had even achieved Earth orbit.”

ScienceMoonPale Blue DotSpaceflightCarl Sagan
Book:Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
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“Here is one way to conceptualize NASA's heroic era: in 1961, Kennedy gave his "moon speech" to Congress, charging them to put an American on the moon "before the decade is out." In the eight years that unspooled between Kennedy's speech and Neil Armstrong's first historic bootprint, NASA, a newborn government agency, established sites and campuses in Texas, Florida, Alabama, California, Ohio, Maryland, Mississippi, Virginia, and the District of Columbia; awarded multi-million-dollar contracts and hired four hundred thousand workers; built a fully functioning moon port in a formerly uninhabited swamp; designed and constructed a moonfaring rocket, spacecraft, lunar lander, and space suits; sent astronauts repeatedly into orbit, where they ventured out of their spacecraft on umbilical tethers and practiced rendezvous techniques; sent astronauts to orbit the moon, where they mapped out the best landing sites; all culminating in the final, triumphant moment when they sent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to step out of their lunar module and bounce about on the moon, perfectly safe within their space suits. All of this, start to finish, was accomplished in those eight years.”

SpaceApolloNasaSpace TravelSpace ProgramMoon LandingSpaceflightKennedyMoonshotApollo Program
Book:Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight
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“Histories of the Kennedy Space Center acknowledge without exaggeration that the obstacle posed by the mosquitoes was so serious that NASA quite literally could not have put a man on the moon by Kennedy's "before the decade is out" deadline without the invention of DDT. In this way, the challenges of spaceflight reveal themselves to be distinctly terrestrial.”

SpaceNasaSpace ProgramSpaceflightShuttleDdtShuttle Program
Book:Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight
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“If someone asked me to sum up what is great about my country, I would probably tell them about Apollo 11, about the four hundred thousand people who worked to make the impossible come true within eight years, about how it changed me to see the space-scarred Columbia capsule in a museum as a child, about how we came in peace for all mankind.”

SpaceApolloNasaSpace ProgramSpaceflightMoon Program
Book:Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight
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“Only since the collapse of the Soviet Union have we learned that the Soviets were in fact developing a moon rocket, known as the N1, in the sixties. All four launch attempts of the N1 ended in explosions. Saturn was the largest rocket in the world, the most complex and powerful ever to fly, and remains so to this day. The fact that it was developed for a peaceful purpose is an exception to every pattern of history, and this is one of the legacies of Apollo.”

SpaceApolloNasaSpace TravelSpaceflightN1Saturn V
Book:Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight
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“Kiedyś, gdy trwała zimna wojna, wielkie pieniądze przeznaczano na zbrojenia. Gdy ten okres minął, część tych pieniędzy przeznaczono na programy kosmiczne. Zintensyfikowała się współpraca USA, Rosji i innych krajów. I efekty są. Jeden kraj z całą pewnością nie udźwignie finansowo lotu na Marsa. Potrzebne są decyzje polityczne, za którymi idą pieniądze. Wyścig do prestiżu na zasadzie "my" albo "oni" do niczego nie doprowadzi. To musi być "my" w sensie ogólnym — Ziemianie. Ale takiego poważnego porozumienia wciąż nie ma”

MarsPolishSpace ExplorationSpaceflightCosmonautHermaszewski
Author:Mirosław Hermaszewski
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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.”

LittlesSeemsEarthVisionHatredIronyNationalismContemplatingRivalryLittle TimeStunningOrbitPlumsErodeCauldronsSquabblesSpaceflight
Book:Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
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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.”

HumansEndsEarthMotivationValuesAsksLossNumbersFictionTalentAdventureHugeSixCommitmentDirectScience FictionBillionsTinyIdeologyHuman LifeThe End Of The DayComparisonRelativeContinuingSurvivingParticipantsRoboticsSpace TravelDispassionateVicariousSpaceflightScience Fiction MovieRelative Value
Author:James Van Allen
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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?”

HumansDoePurposeInterestPositionCostFundamentalsCalmDebateObjectivesRealisticCompellingObsoleteSpace TravelNational InterestsSpaceflight
Author:James Van Allen
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“I find myself now preaching about the golden age of manned spaceflight, because something went on there, within us, that we’re missing. When we went to the Moon, it was not only just standing on a new plateau for all mankind. We changed the way everybody in the world thought of themselves, you know. It was a change that went on inside of us. And we’re losing that.”

KnowsWorldWayAgeChangeMankindMissingChangedMoonLosingStandingGoldenPreachingGolden AgeSpaceflight
Author:Walter Cunningham
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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.”

ShouldHas BeensProblemBehindsSawsTroubleDesignChangedElementsAreasProgramShould HaveTestsSafetyCaughtMissionsFlightEach DayAviationNeglectLockedTolerateSchedulesCould Have BeenProceduresScrewed UpCarelessnessIncapacitySpaceflight
Book:Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond
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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.”

WayNeedsDifferentEarthFoundFunChallengesMovementOceanCarefulAbsenceShipsThoughtfulSatisfyingEnjoyableHeavinessTractionSpaceflightRewarding ExperiencesWeightlessness
Author:Buzz Aldrin
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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.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWantTryingLongReasonWould BePurposeOpportunityInterestSpaceReturnMoonFlightWelcomeRangePlusExplorationSatisfyingPursuedSpace ExplorationExhilaratingSpaceflight
Author:Buzz Aldrin
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“If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on.”

IfsLifeInspirationalInspirationMotivationalMotivationAsksWomenWorkBusinessCareersAdvicePositiveInspirational LifeInspiredShipsSeatsMotivatedLife Is ShortTake A ChanceRocketsInsperationalStay PositiveSpaceshipsBe InspiredMotivational SalesInspirational SalesCool MotivationalInspirational CareerSales TeamBusiness InspirationProfessional CareerMotivational CareerMotivational JobSales Team MotivationalCareer WomenSales LeadershipLeaning InLife Changing InspirationalCareer MotivationMotivation And DriveSpaceflightPowerful InspirationalRare OpportunitiesAwesome MotivationalSuper AwesomeStarting New BusinessAmazing InspirationalSearch Motivational
Author:Sheryl Sandberg
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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...”

PeopleIfsThinkingWorldDifferentCountryHomeEarthReligionDifferencesSpaceRacePerspectiveBordersAngleThink Of YouDifferent PerspectiveCultural DifferencesSpaceflightConnecting The World
Author:Anousheh Ansari
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