Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

Well, we have two major goals. The most important one is to get the station arm on board the station, because that's this really milestone in the space station building since from now on they will be using this arm to continue building the space station.

For the last several years and culminating in six months in orbit next year, I've been training for my third space flight. This one is almost in a category completely different than the previous two, specifically to live in on the space station for six months, to command a space ship and to fly a new rocket ship.

Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.

If the United States commits to the goal of reaching Mars, it will almost certainly do so in reaction to the progress of other nations - as was the case with NASA, the Apollo program, and the project that became the International Space Station.

After assembly complete, when we have a larger crew on orbit, a more complex vehicle, more laboratories and more robot arms, maybe we'll have room for specialists. But right now we don't.

I think I need to continue to think and plan and marry all of the different things that we could do that make transportation in space from the earth to the space station, from the earth to the moon to space stations around the moon to visiting an asteroid.

NewSpace, commercial space - whatever you want to call it - is rising, with or without government support. It is rising in West Texas and on the Gulf Coast, in California and on the Virginia coast, and rising from the ashes of the old space program in Florida and in small shops and university labs in a hundred places in between.

I always call myself a space construction worker.

The space station here is a magical place and an incredible science facility.

I think the legacy of the space station will be that we can do something this technically complex in an international way.

I was a flight engineer on my second flight, which is the most senior position a non-American can have aboard the shuttle. We're the cockpit crew. We fly the vehicle up to space, dock the vehicle to the space station, undock it at the end of the mission, and return it to the ground.

I love working at NASA, but the part that has been the most satisfying on a day-to-day basis, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute, has been working on board the space station. Even if I'm just cleaning the vents in the fans, it all is important.

Planets look about the same here as they do to you on the Earth because we really aren't that much closer. Our home, the International Space Station, orbits around the Earth at about 200 miles.

It's just this beautiful laboratory in space, and it's doing a lot of really cool things. So being up there and just being able to fly through that big station one more time and do some experiments while you're up there and get that view out of the cupola... priceless.

I think a good life-work balance is important, and that's even more important in some cases on the space station.

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

One thing that flying in space does for you is it gives you a change in perspective. We all have to live in the same place.

In space, you need to stay as 'usual' as possible. On the space station, I would brush my hair every day.

We're using the space station as a test bed for some of the technologies that are going to enable us to work autonomously in space and hit some of our deep-space exploration goals.

Something people don't recognize is that being on the space station is probably a lot like being in some kind of confinement - like isolation.

After floating for nine and a half months in space, gravity is not your friend.

The Space Station is primarily made of aluminum. The smell is really weird and sort of like burning metal. It is absolutely distinct and totally repeatable.

I thought I was prepared for space, and it still absolutely defied every expectation and dream. It is an incredible thing to put yourself on a rocket and launch off the planet. It is an amazing thing to see the planet from space. This blue sphere is almost indescribably beautiful.

The exploration of space: Be it by humans or robots, based on the best choice for the mission and the most efficient means to return the data and science sought. Most of the time, this will mean we send robots due to cost and danger. But sometimes, we will need the irreplaceable judgment and descriptive abilities of a person on the spot.

The ride to orbit was impressive, as it always is. But once I got on board the space station, it really felt like I was visiting an old home; it felt very comfortable.