Space Flight Quotes

• Of course risk is part of spaceflight. We accept some of that to achieve greater goals in exploration and find out more about ourselves and the universe.

  Lisa Nowak

  Safety, Goal, Risk

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• To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature-could one dream of anything more?

  Yuri Gagarin

  Dream, Cosmos, Firsts

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• I'm coming back in... and it's the saddest moment of my life.

  Edward Higgins White

  Moments, Coming Back, Star Gazing

  "Fictional character: Ed White". "From the Earth to the Moon", www.imdb.com. 1998.

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• Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Vision, Exploration, Century

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• With our present knowledge, we can respond to the challenge of stellar space flight solely with intellectual concepts and purely hypothetical analysis. Hardware solutions are still entirely beyond our reach and far, far away.

  Wernher von Braun

  Future, Challenges, Intellectual

  Wernher Von Braun (1969). “Space Frontier”

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• The single simplest reason why human space flight is necessary is this, stated as plainly as possible: keeping all your breeding pairs in one place is a retarded way to run a species.

  Warren Ellis

  Running, Way, Pairs

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• That whole day [ of the space flight] is very vividly impressed on my memory because it was such a new experience. We hadn't done that before. And then I've recalled it so often since then I think that it's a - it's remained very vivid over the past 50 years, seems to me like about a week or two instead of 50 years.

  John Glenn

  Memories, Past, Thinking

  Source: www.npr.org

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• The Shuttle is to space flight what Lindbergh was to commercial aviation.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Moon, Aviation, Star Gazing

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• History will remember the twentieth century for two technological developments: atomic energy and space flight.

  Neil Armstrong

  Future, Technological Development, Two

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• We hope to create thousands of astronauts over the next few years and bring alive their dream of seeing the majestic beauty of our planet from above, the stars in all their glory and the amazing sensations of weightlessness and space flight.

  Richard Branson

  Dream, Stars, Future

  "Now Virgin to offer trips to space". www.cnn.com. September 27, 2004.

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• Other anatomical changes associated with long-duration space flight are definitely negative: the immune system weakens, the heart shrinks because it doesn't have to strain against gravity, eyesight tends to degrade, sometimes markedly (no one's exactly sure why yet). The spine lengthens as the little sacs of fluid between the vertebrae expand, and bone mass decreases as the body sheds calcium. Without gravity, we don't need muscle and bone mass to support our own weight, which is what makes life in space so much fun but also so inherently bad for the human body, long-term.

  Chris Hadfield

  Fun, Heart, Long

  Chris Hadfield (2013). “An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth”, p.137, Pan Macmillan

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• I believe that the time has arrived for medical investigation of the problems of manned rocket flight, for it will not be the engineering problems but rather the limits of the human frame that will make the final decision as to whether manned space flight will eventually become a reality.

  Wernher von Braun

  Believe, Reality, Medicine

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• By the way, Japan is also known to be actively engaged in manned space flights as part of the International Space Station.

  Vladimir Putin

  Japan, Way, International

  Source: www.rt.com

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• The urge to explore has propelled evolution since the first water creatures reconnoitered the land. Like all living systems, cultures cannot remain static; they evolve or decline. They explore or expire. . . . Beyond all rationales, space flight is a spiritual quest in the broadest sense, one promising a revitalization of humanity and a rebirth of hope no less profound than the great opening out of mind and spirit at the dawn of our modern age.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Spiritual, Land, Profound

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• There are some who question the relevance of space activities in a developing nation. To us, there is no ambiguity of purpose. We do not have the fantasy of competing with the economically advanced nations in the exploration of the moon or the planets or manned space-flight. But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society.

  Vikram Sarabhai

  Meaningful, Real, Moon

  "India Space Programs and Exploration Handbook". USA International Business Publications, 2007.

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• Nothing will stop us. The road to the stars is steep and dangerous. But we're not afraid . . . Space flights can't be stopped. This isn't the work of one man or even a group of men. It is a historical process which mankind is carrying out in accordance with the natural laws of human development.

  Yuri Gagarin

  Stars, Future, Men

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• My mental boundaries expanded when I viewed the Earth against a black and uninviting vacuum, yet my country's rich traditions had conditioned me to look beyond man-made boundaries and prejudices. One does not have to undertake a space flight to come by this feeling.

  Rakesh Sharma

  Inspirational, Change, Country

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• As Jeremy Bentham had asked about animals well over two hundred years ago, the question was not whether they could reason or talk, but could they suffer? And yet, somehow, it seemed to take more imagination for humans to identify with animal suffering than it did to conceive of space flight or cloning or nuclear fusion. Yes, she was a fanatic in the eyes of most of the country. . .Mostly, however, she just lacked patience for people who wouldn't accept her belief that humans inflicted needless agony on the animals around them, and they did so in numbers that were absolutely staggering.

  Chris Bohjalian

  Country, Eye, Animal

  FaceBook post by Chris Bohjalian from Nov 15, 2013

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• I'd like to build myself a rocket ship and launch myself into space. Still waiting on the technological advances required for a DIY space flight.

  Alex Gaskarth

  Space, Waiting, Diy

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• It was the time of the Cold War and so there were was a lot of pressure on the - to get going and the Russians were claiming that they were - Soviets were claiming they were ahead of us in technology. And so it was against that backdrop that the early space flights took off.

  John Glenn

  War, Technology, Pressure

  Source: www.npr.org

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• Now with the international space station generating a bunch of video, and Space X and other companies pursuing private space flight, I think it's on all of our radars much more than it has been since the moonshots. The science of filmmaking is making these visions possible now.

  Jon Spaihts

  Thinking, Space, Vision

  Source: www.mtv.com

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• There's a huge amount of pressure on every astronaut, because when you get right down to it, the experiments that are conducted on a space flight, or the satellites that are carried up, the work that's to be done, is important and expensive work, and you are up there for a week or two on a Space Shuttle flight. The country has invested a lot of money in you and your training, and the Space Shuttle and everything that's in it, and you have to do things correctly. You can't make a mistake during that week or two that you're in space.

  Sally Ride

  Country, Mistake, Two

  "Astronaut Hall of Fame". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 2, 2006.

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• I'm somewhat antagonistic towards these various projects that charge $250,000 per person for the ability to be weightless for 3 minutes after being brought up from earth. I think there are such better uses for that money that i seriously question the ethics of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on space flights for extremely wealthy people.

  Arthur Frommer

  Thinking, People, Dollars

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• And from, you know, small ideas, bigger ideas emerge. So we're starting with suborbital space flights and we'll then go into orbital space flights and, you know, maybe one day we'll send people on a one-way voyage into the depths of space as per the science fiction trips.

  Richard Branson

  Ideas, People, One Day

  "Richard Branson: Time To Rethink 'Business As Usual'". "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. December 1, 2011.

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• Designing a station with artificial gravity would undoubtedly be a daunting task. Space agencies would have to re-examine many reliable technologies under the light of the new forces these tools would have to endure. Space flight would have to take several steps back before moving forward again.

  Andy Weir

  Moving, Technology, Agency

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