Spacecraft Systems Quotes

On the technical side, Apollo 8 was mainly a test flight for the Saturn V and the Apollo spacecraft. The main spacecraft system that needed testing on a real lunar flight was the onboard navigation system.

I was the most emotional of the flight directors. Space really got me all honked up.

On a standard space shuttle crew, two of the astronauts have a test pilot background - the commander and the pilot.

The basic thing you have to understand is everything that happens on that spaceship, from the time you crawl into that seat to the time it touches down, is controlled from the ground. There's no one thing that makes a good astronaut. I don't know any person with determination and will that can't go to space.

Our task was doing maintenance and repairs to keep the station in a good state for the return of the shuttle flights and resumption of major ISS construction.

I operated a periscopic TV camera so the commander, Anatoly Artsebarsky, could establish where we were heading. It is real teamwork on Soyuz.

The training flow for the space station is a year-and-a-half to two years.

If anything, when you're up in space and you're inside a space ship, which is your home, and without which you would not survive, you know that Earth is your home. This is the only place you can return. In fact we're very meticulous. Part of our job is to maintain the spaceship. If we apply the same kind of model to Earth maybe we'd have a different outlook.

I study orbital dynamics as a hobby. My idea of a good time is sitting down and drawing on that knowledge to imagine a space mission from beginning to end, getting as many details right as I can.