Leroy Chiao Quotes

Science does not just drive space travel - space travel also drives science.

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.

Every day, we get a little bit closer to the kind of expertise and the kind of experience we're going to need to go there. I'd love to be the guy walking on Mars.

In 1962, President Kennedy succeeded in captivating Americans by explaining the advantages of being the first country to reach the moon and the dangers of allowing another nation to beat us there.

I don't think the space station is innovative. Going to the moon was innovative because we had no idea how to do it.

If it hadn't been for the Cold War, neither Russia nor America would have been sending people into space.

We must become a space-faring nation.

I think we know how to do Mars.

I think there's going to be a very sudden shift in people's perception of the International Space Station, because suddenly it's going to look much, much bigger than it already is.

We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket.

We used to joke about canned men, putting people in a can and seeing how far you can send them and bring them back. That's not the purpose of this program... Space is a laboratory, and we go into it to work and learn the new.

It was the time of the Cold War and so there were was a lot of pressure on the - to get going and the Russians were claiming that they were - Soviets were claiming they were ahead of us in technology. And so it was against that backdrop that the early space flights took off.

Space has not changed but technology has, in many cases, improved dramatically. A good example is digital technology where today's cell phones are far more powerful than the computers on the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module that we used to navigate to the moon and operate all the spacecraft control systems.

The launch of PSLV-C23 fills every Indian's heart with pride and I can see the joy and satisfaction on your faces. Feel privileged to watch this in person.

For me, one of the most fertile consequences of the space program is the extent to which it stimulates people to innovate because they want to create a different tomorrow than what they're living in today. And it's that culture of innovation that spawns entirely new economies.

With space travel, [it's] no different. You know, in 1990 I read the name Virgin Galactic Airways. Loved the name. And set out to try to find an engineer or rocket scientist in the world who could build a safe, reusable rocket that could take people to and from space and we could start a whole new era of commercial space travel.

The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.

Space is not a two-year objective. It used to be, in the early '60's, we had this eye candy of Mercury and Gemini and Apollo and every year we would do something more and more and it met those needs. But the easy stuff has been done.

So Ahmadinejad wants to be the first Iranian in space - wasn't he there just last week? 'Iran launches monkey into space.'

Under a Trump administration, Florida and America will lead the way into the stars.

You get to a certain moment where you realize all those humans who landed on the moon did so in between Chris [Nolan] being born and me being born and no one had gone back since, all these Super-8 films we grew up watching of rocket launches, you get to a certain age and you realize all the speeches about going back, they're speeches, there's no money there, we're not going back.

A space program that truly goes somewhere! With his deeds, not only words, President Obama has revitalized our struggling space program.

I believe that the manned space program can engage the public by advancing the space frontier. Every next mission takes you farther out in space than you were before, either technologically or in terms of distance.

The only two countries who will be able to launch people into space will be Russia and China. I've seen the Russian technology up close and I've had a chance to look at some of the Chinese technology. It's a very high level. They have good hardware and what China lacks is operational experience. But as they gain more experience, as they fly more missions, they'll catch up quickly. The U.S. does face the possibility of losing the lead in human space flight during this period of what we call the gap.

President Bush announced a billion dollar mission to the moon and Mars. He came up with a snappy new slogan - to drill where no man has drilled before.