Astronautical Engineering Quotes

Chemical propulsion is obsolete to go anywhere other than the moon.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.

It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.

Mars is key to humanity's future in space. It is the closest planet that has all the resources needed to support life and technological civilization. Its complexity uniquely demands the skills of human explorers, who will pave the way for human settlers.

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

America has tossed its cap over the wall of space.

The Space Program is an investment of the nation’s future…. Humans will not be confined to this planet forever.

We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon and to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own.

I did not come to NASA to make history.

Aviation - and space travel, in particular - have always been especially captivating.

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.

In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle it must never outstep, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York!

I am not going to pretend that flying a spaceship will be as safe as getting in a 747 with four engines for a flight across the Atlantic.

I'm never going to go to Mars, but I've helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.

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.

In my opinion, future space exploration will require us to inhabit the moon, initially, and later Mars. This is a humongous task for any one nation to carry out.

It's something to see a satellite being launched from another satellite.

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

The first footfalls on Mars will mark a historic milestone, an enterprise that requires human tenacity matched with technology to anchor ourselves on another world.

Space offers extraordinary potential for commerce and adventure, for new innovations and new tests of will. As Americans, we can't help but reach for the stars. It's our nature. It's our destiny.

If you're going to go into space, you have to have an objective, a mission. Where do you want to go? Earth orbit? The moon? Mars? What's the technology to get there? You develop the technology for the mission.

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.

I think that somebody with the resources and innovation and the idea is going to come out of nowhere and come up with a successful space travel program.

What I'm trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.

This is the first convention of the space age, where a candidate can promise the moon and mean it.

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