Orbit Quotes

It's [the earth's] shape has the rounded appearance of a perfect sphere. This is shown first of all by the name of 'orb' which is bestowed upon it by the general consent of mankind.... Our eyesight also confirms this belief, because the firmament presents the aspect of a concave hemisphere equidistant in every direction, which would be impossible in the case of any other figure.

The miniaturization of electronics, which ultimately was driven by the marketplace, was started by NASA, because it costs money to get something into orbit. So you want to trim your electronics, miniaturize your electronics, miniaturize your satellites.

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.

The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.

I've had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.

I’m struck again by the irony that spaceflight-conceived in the cauldron of nationalist rivalries and hatreds-brings with it a stunning transnational vision. You spend even a little time contemplating the Earth from orbit and the most deeply engrained nationalisms begin to erode. They seem the squabbles of mites on a plum.

Space is dark but, of course, when we're on the sun side of the Earth, we're in full illumination and we have all the reflection of the Earth below us, beautiful blue Earth and we're in daylight. Only on the back side, opposite side of the sun, it seems like night to us, too.

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

A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward space travel.

Taking into consideration that we are involved in Russia's orbit, any coughing there will produce painful economic and political convulsions here.

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.

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

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.

Man and the earth move in orbits: what they did before, they will do again.

Spaceflight is a tricky business. It is definitely difficult, and I think we forget that sometime.

Remember, Voyager was just a flyby, Cassini is in orbit. We have the opportunity for monitoring them and their behavior, their comings and goings, how they evolve, when they appear and disappear.

You are my centre when I spin away.

They say that in space, nobody can hear you scream. The first time I stepped out of the airlock, I was ready to scream - not because I was scared but because I was so excited to see the Earth below me.

Space excites me. My dream is to go to space.

Hubble orbits high, outside Earth's atmosphere so it can see a wide spectrum of light our atmosphere blocks.

To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity.

Fortunately, most things around the supermassive black hole are just going to go around it. They're going to orbit it. They don't actually get sucked in.

Well, what I don't get is why do we exist? I don't mean how, but why.' I watched the fireflies of his thoughts orbit his head. He said, 'we exist because we exist. . .we could imagine all sorts of universes like this one, but this is the one that happened.

The enormous energy of the twentieth century, enough to drive the planet into a new orbit around a happier star, was being expended to maintain this immense motionless pause.

Planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus.