Eugene Cernan Quotes

So many people I talk to who work in technology, you ask them, 'What got you interested in science?' and those from my generation say, 'The Apollo landings.'

If we hadn't put a man on the moon, there wouldn't be a Silicon Valley today.

From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It's not a miracle; we just decided to go.

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.

Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer.

When I was 12, I saw the Apollo moon landings, and I thought that was really fantastic and exciting and thought, 'That's what I want to do.'

I believed that once we got to the Moon, there was no stopping us. But in fact, we did stop.

I was an eight-year-old kid when I watched the first Apollo Moon Landing way back in 1969 and there was something about that moment that really stuck in my head. I'd always been interested in space and flying and I was building model rockets and model airplanes, but something about that moment, I can remember like it was yesterday watching the Apollo Lunar Lander approach the surface of the Moon and then later watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin take the first steps on the Moon, and something that day started the dream for me that, hey, I want to be like those guys.

From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It's not a miracle; we just decided to go.

The biggest benefit of Apollo was the inspiration it gave to a growing generation to get into science and aerospace.

Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.

I respect John Kennedy for saying that he had a dream that we'd go to the moon before the end of the decade.

Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.

I think when the United States of America put a man on the moon in 1969, that was one of the greatest accomplishments mankind has ever done.

Space fascinated me because I'm from the generation that saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon live on TV. I was 7 at the time. Also, 'Lost in Space' was one of my favorite shows on TV back then.

Sending people into space is very important culturally. That's really the justification. You cannot rationally justify it on the basis of the science and technology we get out of it.

Here I am at the turn of the millennium and I'm still the last man to have walked on the moon, somewhat disappointing. It says more about what we have not done than about what we have done.

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.

I can still remember them wheeling the black and white TV sets into our classroom at school so we could watch the men landing on the Moon, and that obviously had a huge impact. I later found out those people flying Apollo were ex-military test pilots, so I decided to join the Air Force and become a test pilot.

I grew up watching a lot of the coverage of the early U.S. space program, all the way back starting with Mercury and then through Gemini and Apollo and of course going to the moon as the main part of the Apollo program.

Every one of today's smartphones has thousands of times more processing power than the computers that guided astronauts to the moon.

In the late '60s, I was seven, eight, nine years old, and what was going on in the news at that time that really excited a seven, eight, nine year old boy was the Space Race.

The fastest manned vehicle in history was Apollo 10. It reached 25,000 mph.

I feel we need to remind the world about the Apollo missions and that we can still do impossible things.

I was born too late to experience Apollo 11, though I do trek to Dad's house every time there's some space event. There's something awesome about crossing your fingers and watching a tense Mission Control room do their thing.