Rockets Quotes

The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet.

Man must rise above the Earth -- to the top of the atmosphere and beyond -- for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives

Our two greatest problems are gravity and paper work. We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.

It takes sixty-five thousand errors before you are qualified to make a rocket.

You don't start shooting rockets at Israel and expect that we'll just sit back supinely and die.

I always see what’s... wrong. Would you want that? When I see a car or a rocket or spacecraft, I only see what’s wrong. I never see what’s right. It’s not a recipe for happiness.

Rocket Man, burning out his fuse up here alone.

The core of what I do is solve problems, whether that's in graphic engine flow or rockets. I like working on things that are going to have an impact one way or the other.

Today the atomic bomb has altered profoundly the nature of the world as we know it, and the human race consequently finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking... Never before was it possible for one nation to make war on another without sending armies across borders. Now with rockets and atomic bombs no center of population on the earth's surface is secure from surprise destruction in a single attack.... We cannot leave it to generals, senators, and diplomats to work out a solution over a period of generations… There is no defense in science against the weapon which can destroy civilization. Our defense is not in armaments, nor in science, nor in going underground. Our defense is in law and order… Future thinking must prevent wars.

That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

It ain't always rocket science, sometimes a door is just a door.

A rocket is an experiment; a star is an observation.

Rockets are cool. There's no getting around that.

Cycling is not rocket science.

If they attack, we shall fight to the end. If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of the United States, including New York, in our defense against aggression. But we haven't got them, so we shall fight with what we've got.

Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

Growing up, I was fascinated with Buck Rogers' airplanes. As I began to mature in World War II, it became jets and rocket planes. But it was always in the air.

Making money is a common sense. It's not rocket science. But unfortunately, when it comes to money, common sense is uncommon.

I wonder why no one called the police about the rocket launcher? God knows my neighbors usually report it if I so much as fart in my backyard. (Bubba)

I have devoted myself to the Rockets.

The great thing about being an astronaut is you kind of get to do a little bit of everything. I mean, we're going to ride a rocket uphill.

Growing up in the 1960s, I can't remember a time when I wasn't fascinated by airplanes and rockets.

Several weeks before the Russians launched Sputnik, our team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory asked permission to place a rocket in orbit around the Earth. We could to it with two days of preparation. We had been doing experiments with 2 stage rockets to test materials and designs for nose-cones returning from space. We launched rockets straight up. At the maximum height we turned it around and fired the second stage to drive it straight back to Earth so it could achieve the speed of an object returning from space. We were developing more and more powerful second stage rockets. We had just calculated that our newest second stage had more than enough thrust to, after the ascent, turn the rocket at right angles to the perpendicular, and fire the rocket into orbit around the earth. We could do this easily. The military were initially very enthusiastic. America could be the first nation that put a satellite in orbit. However, the authorities in Washington, not only refused us permission to try, but postponed a number of our regular launches and forbade us from talking to anyone about our capability or request for our experiment.. When Sputnik was launched into orbit a few weeks later, we were really puzzled. No one ever explained why Washington had refused us permission, but we came up with a theory: The issue of the legality under international law of one country having its satellite in orbit over another country’s airspace was not at all settled. If we did satellite reconnaissance in the future over the Soviet Union, the Russians could claim that was an act of war. And we had extensive plans to create such satellites and launch them when we solved all the technical problems in the future. We believe that the authorities knew that the Russians were about to launch Sputnik. By allowing them to be the first to launch, it would be they—not us—who would be setting the precedent of sending satellites over other nation’s airspace and claiming this was not aggression or an act of war as they thought they were way ahead of us. In addition, after WWII, President Eisenhower was having difficulty getting Congress to spend money on rocketry and satellites as well as science and technology including science and mathematics education which was then terrible in America. So allowing the Russians to “beat us” the administration had the issue that they needed, and they allowed the Russians to set the legal precedents that they would have opposed if we were ahead of them and orbited a satellite first. Either President Eisenhower and his team were brilliantly shrewd or they were pretty dumb because we easily could have put our rockets in orbit then.

We want a rocket-free country. That’s what we want.

There's the whole myth about rocket science. It's really not that hard. It's not brain surgery.