Sam Mikulak Quotes

Flying in space is risky. It will never be safe, and the best thing we can do is manage those risks. It's important for people, for human beings, to be in space because they're adaptable and because they're not pre-programmed software that can go off and do tasks that are appropriate for machines.

Every shuttle mission's been successful.

When 'Apollo 13' appeared as an opportunity and I began to tackle that in as authentic a way as I possibly could, I really became enthralled by the philosophical side of space travel and why we need to explore - what it means to us here on Earth - all of those things. I became a huge proponent.

With 'Apollo 13,' I wasn't sure the genre would work, because space films hadn't done that well.

But every crew that makes it to orbit is lucky. Spaceflight's not easy.

The astronaut corps is a very small part of a very large team that enables human spaceflight.

Ironically, it is only when disaster strikes that the shuttle makes the headlines. Its routine flights attracted less media interest than unmanned probes to the planets or the images from the Hubble Telescope. The fate of Columbia (like that of Challenger in 1986) reminded us that space is still a hazardous environment.

I think the people that want to fly in space, who want to work in space, who want to go to station, these people realize that there is a risk inherent to what they do. They understand that there are possible off-nominal situations, dangerous situations in space, and there's no insurance against that.

Space is going to be commonplace.

I was only a hero by default. The flights were few and far between. There weren't that many astronauts. The moon flights were so interesting and exciting.

If we want to travel into the future, we just need to go fast. Really fast. And I think the only way we're ever likely to do that is by going into space.

We will certainly see teachers, journalists, artists and poets in space. Whatever it takes to the be the best is what it will take to get you into space.

Astronauts are very professional and when they're preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives.

We don't have the capability today to put a human being in space of any kind, shape or form, which is absolutely, totally unacceptable when we got the greatest flying machine in the world sitting down at Kennedy in a garage there with nothing to do.

We were young, we were pilots, and we were hungry to test the new technology of 'space machines.' And we all wanted to be first.

Our shuttle crew is four people, because we're going to transfer a crew up to station, so all the jobs are divided between four people rather than five or six people. So it's been busy.

I would enjoy flying to Mars. This was the dream of the first cosmonauts. I wish I could realize it! I am ready to fly without coming back.

America can take man to the moon, and America can take men to Mars - and beyond.

I witnessed the building of the Space Shuttle Columbia, the first orbiter to be launched into space.

I remember the moon landings, and Apollo was the paradigm by which all progress was measured at that time. And I knew that creating a true space-faring civilization was both possible and practical. What I failed to realize was that the effort would fail due to bureaucratic inertia and political apathy.

I hope there will be continued U.K. investment in human spaceflight to enable Britain to benefit from space travel in the longer term and that many more Britons - women and men - will travel into space.

I operated a periscopic TV camera so the commander, Anatoly Artsebarsky, could establish where we were heading. It is real teamwork on Soyuz.

We're going to be focusing our science on things that will take us farther and longer into space. For many of those experiments, the crew members are human guinea pigs, which is fine; that's part of my job. I don't mind being a human guinea pig.

I've been approached to do some things with astronauts and the preparation that astronauts go through.

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.