Best Space Exploration Quotes & Sayings

I am glad we have not yet been able to reach the stars or inhabitable planets that dance about them. For they would in all probability be owned and divided by corporations and framed by industrial interests. Better they rest in distant tranquility, apart from our manufactured chaos.
Let generations to come that learn to embrace one another, with their scientists, artists and poets, be the ones that immerse in that abundance and future. For now it is best it remains out of humanity's childlike hands in that big jar, light years away, marked "cookies." There for that coming time when the only thing we need feed off of, is the endless discovery and beauty. — Tom Althouse

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

At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all. For a million years humans had grown up with a personal daily knowledge of the vault of heaven. In the last few thousand years they began building and emigrating to the cities. In the last few decades, a major fraction of the human population has abandoned a rustic way of life. As technology developed and the cities were polluted, the nights became starless. New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and that had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that ended only with the dawn of space exploration. — Carl Sagan

Because we were the good guys. We were in the right. The universe looks out for people who act with honor in furtherance of an honorable cause. It must, or we never would have gotten this far as a species."

"We won - this little conflict and a thousand like it - because we were destined to win. The universe will allow no other outcome. — G.S. Jennsen

Is manned space exploration important? Yes - not least because it simply works much better than sending robots. — Henry Spencer

It's pretty hard to get to another star system. Alpha Centauri is four light years away, so if you go at 10 per cent of the speed of light, it's going to take you 40 years, and that's assuming you can instantly reach that speed, which isn't going to be the case. You have to accelerate. You have to build up to 20 or 30 per cent and then slow down, assuming you want to stay at Alpha Centauri and not go zipping past. It's just hard. With current life spans, you need generational ships. You need antimatter drives, because that's the most mass-efficient. It's doable, but it's super slow. — Elon Musk

In short, on the basis of horse sense and the best scientific information, there was nothing good to be said for the exploration of space. The time was long past when one nation could seem more glorious than another by hurling some heavy object into nothingness. — Kurt Vonnegut

When we explore the cosmos, we come to believe and prove that we can solve problems that have never been solved. It brings out the best in us. Space exploration imbues everyone with an optimistic view of the future. — Bill Nye

I don't think the space station will ever do anything for exploration. Putting people up there for a year or more is the only way you will get anywhere near the exploration concept. — Wally Schirra

We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share. — John F. Kennedy

You can't be on the cusp of innovation and at the forefront of technology if you're wearing blinders. If you don't have an exploration program where you're exploring your world here on Earth, underwater, and in space, then you're wearing blinders and handicapping yourself. — Gwynne Shotwell

Once solved, the severe handicaps imposed on space exploration by the weight and chemical limitations of rockets would no longer apply. The whole timetable of our conquest of the planets in our solar system would be tremendously speeded up, from hot Mercury all the way out to frigid Pluto. — Donald A. Wollheim

Semantics, Admiral. I'd appreciate an honest answer."

"I'd appreciate a multitude of honest answers, but I rarely expect to receive them." Miriam sighed; the verbal tete-a-tete was growing tiresome. Time to bring an end to it with, ironically, honesty. — G.S. Jennsen

...It wasn't only the color that suggested war to the ancients - it was the strange motion of Mars and the other visible disks that did not behave like the stars, seemingly fixed in the firmament, but advanced and retreated and advanced again along their paths. These disks were given the name planets, meaning wanderers. — Meg Howrey

One of the big things about space exploration is that it is as expensive as it is complicated, and you need all the countries of the world to help if you want to accomplish big goals. — Ellen Stofan

The universe is not ordered, and it will not become so simply because one wishes it. The universe is chaos made manifest. The military does a fine job of creating an illusion of structure, of dependable rules to provide an answer for every situation.

"But it is only an illusion, one which on its best days holds the chaos at bay. — G.S. Jennsen

The National Air and Space Museum is unlike any other place on this planet. If you're hosting visitors from another country and they want to know what single museum best captures what it is to be American, this is the museum you take them to. Here they can see the 1903 Wright Flyer, the 1927 Spirit of St. Louis, the 1926 Goddard rocket, and the Apollo 11 command module - silent beacons of exploration, of a few people willing to risk their lives for the sake of discovery. Without — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

This was exactly what I experienced in space: immense gratitude for the opportunity to see Earth from this vantage, and for the gift of the planet we've been given. — Ron Garan