SPACE TRAVEL QUOTES III
quotations about space travel and exploration
As long as we are a single-planet species, we are vulnerable to extinction by a planetwide catastrophe, natural or self-induced. Once we become a multiplanet species, our chances to live long and prosper will take a huge leap skyward.
DAVID GRINSPOON
Slate, January 7, 2004
The planet was our mother and our burial ground. No wonder the human spirit wished to leave. Leave this prolific belly. Leave also this great tomb.
SAUL BELLOW
Mr. Sammler's Planet
And everything soon must change. Men would set their watches by other suns than this.
SAUL BELLOW
Mr. Sammler's Planet
Space tourism will bloom very soon.... Regular tourist flights, orbital hotels--then the real payoff begins. I foresee an interplanetary cruise ship, a lunar cycler. Assembled in Earth orbit, this liner is given a powerful push--sending it on its way to the moon. The lunar cycler will undergo a cosmic dance: loop around the moon, return to Earth, slingshot around Earth, and return to the moon again. The round-trip will take just over a week. And every time the lunar cycler swings by Earth, it'll be met by a supply ferry, maybe even restocked with champagne, and boarded by a fresh group of travelers.
BUZZ ALDRIN
Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration
To venture into space we must be strong-willed and determined. We must be fully committed to its exploration and discovery; space permits no half measures and is unforgiving of mistakes.
HENRY JOY MCCRACKEN
LM, November 1997
In my mind, public space travel will precede efforts toward exploration -- be it returning to the moon, going to Mars, visiting asteroids, or whatever seems appropriate. We've got millions and millions of people who want to go into space, who are willing to pay. When you figure in the payload potential of customers, everything changes.
BUZZ ALDRIN
Esquire, January 2003
I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.
EDWARD ABBEY
"The First Morning", Desert Solitaire
There are so many problems to solve on this planet first before we begin to trash other worlds.
E. A. BUCCHIANERI
Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
2001: A Space Odyssey
And now 'tis man who dares assault the sky...
And as we come to claim our promised place,
Aim only to repay the good you gave,
And warm with human love the chill of space.
THOMAS G. BERGIN
"Space Prober"
That's ultimately what space travel was all about, was sending out ships from earth into space. And not just in some, like, space shuttle that's got the foam coming off of it. You need your own glowing, you know, multicolored' space ship.
BECK
"The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton"
Imagine we could accelerate continuously at 1 g -- what we're comfortable with on good old terra firma -- to the midpoint of our voyage, and decelerate continuously at 1 g until we arrive at our destination. It would take a day to get to Mars, a week and a half to Pluto, a year to the Oort Cloud, and a few years to the nearest stars.
CARL SAGAN
Pale Blue Dot
NASA knows that space travel, specifically spending time in zero gravity, is hard. But since the plan is to send men and women up to Mars, which is a six-month flight one way, it is trying hard to develop ways to counteract the debilitating aspects of space travel so the astronauts can function when they get to the red planet. Luckily, the gravity on Mars is less than it is on Earth, so they should be able to stand up and carry out their activities.
WILL BOWEN
"Astronaut twins study shows space travel causes premature aging", La Jolla Light, August 1, 2017
Today the stars and tomorrow the galaxies. No force exists in the Universe that can stop us.
JAMES P. HOGAN
Inherit the Stars
I think commercial space travel is critical. We're not really going to do much in space at all until the price to low-Earth orbit gets driven down. Right now it's just so damn expensive, there's no economic incentive to go into space. So any missions are just governments spending money they're not going to recoup. But if you can drive down the price, then there will be a commercial space enterprise and economics will see to it from there. If you can imagine a scenario where, for $50,000 you can go into space and spend a week on a space hotel, like a space station. And the whole process were as safe for you as international [air] travel is today. I think people would be lining up to do that. There would be infinite demand.
ANDY WEIR
"The Martian author Andy Weir: Private space travel is critical", engadget, September 30, 2015
Space can be mapped and crossed and occupied without definable limit; but it can never be conquered. When our race has reached its ultimate achievements, and the stars themselves are scattered no more widely than the seed of Adam, even then we shall still be like ants crawling on the face of the Earth. The ants have covered the world, but have they conquered it -- for what do their countless colonies know of it, or of each other?
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
"We'll Never Conquer Space"
Returning to Earth, that was the challenging part.
BUZZ ALDRIN
"The Dark Side of the Moon", GQ, January 2015
Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said "Because it is there." Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
speech at Rice University, September 12, 1962
Space travel is just too darn expensive. And we know why it's too expensive. It's because we throw the rockets away. We're never going on to do these grand things and to expand into the solar system as long as we throw this hardware away. We need to build reusable rockets.
JEFF BEZOS
"Jeff Bezos Says He's Using Amazon 'Lottery Winnings' To Put Humans In Space", Newsweek, July 21, 2017
Will outer space be preserved for peaceful use and developed for the benefit of all mankind? Or will it become another focus for the arms race--and thus an area of dangerous and sterile competition? The choice is urgent. And it is ours to make. The nations of the world have recently united in declaring the continent of Antarctica "off limits" to military preparations. We could extend this principle to an even more important sphere. National vested interests have not yet been developed in space or in celestial bodies. Barriers to agreement are now lower than they will ever be again.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City, September 22, 1960