Ellen Stofan Quotes

My key aim is to get man on the surface of Mars by the mid-2030s.

My childhood dreams were focused on being part of the effort to make humanity a multiplanetary species.

In Mars, we've been given a wonderful set of moons... where we can send continuous numbers of people.

By refocusing our space program on Mars for America's future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it's time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface.

'The Martian' may be fiction, but at NASA, we are working to make it a reality.

Every couple of years, we could dispatch people from Earth to Mars.

Britain should definitely be part of a Mars mission.

I think humans will reach Mars, and I would like to see it happen in my lifetime.

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.

I don't go along with going to Moon first to build a launch pad to go to Mars. We should go to Mars from Earth orbit. We have already been to the Moon; we've already practiced.

I was thinking as a little girl growing up that I would be there. When I look at whether we can go to Mars, it's definitely something we can do.

Eventually we're going to go to Mars, and I firmly believe the first person that sets foot on Mars will get there on a Boeing rocket.

In terms of goals for NASA before I die, we need to be living on Mars. And I might not live that long, so they better get on with it!

I was a frustrated astronaut all my life. I grew up at a time when space seemed to have no boundaries, and lots of us presumed humans would be living on the moon and landing on Mars.

The guys who walk on Mars are going to be historic.

I think a Moon base is not necessary to get to Mars, but I think it will be helpful. It would give you a chance to develop and mature some systems; long duration, deep space stuff; and you're close enough to get some help, via radio from Earth.

I would suspect strongly that over a period of time, if we put our mind to going to Mars, it will be a consortium of several countries.

With the mission to Mars, the whole world wants to get involved. So we actually have 13 different space agencies from around the world working on the global exploration road map.

I don't think we're going to build a 50-person spacecraft or a 100-person spacecraft.

If humanity doesn't land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.

We constantly learn new lessons up here. The experiences we gather will enable us to establish a long-term station on the moon and to go on to Mars.

Chemical propulsion is obsolete to go anywhere other than the moon. Three days - that's acceptable. But for Mars, we need propulsion technologies to get us there in, say, 60 days - then spend whatever length of time we want to spend and return when we want to come home.

Clearly, some creative thinking is badly needed if humans are to have a future beyond Earth. Returning to the Moon may be worthy and attainable, but it fails to capture the public's imagination. What does get people excited is the prospect of a mission to Mars.

We've gotta reinvest in space travel. We should've never left the moon.

Am I willing to go to Mars? Yes, but I'm not willing to spend nine months getting there, then wait 18 more months until the planets align to come home.