Shuttle Launch Quotes & Sayings

I wanted to get superimposed on a shuttle launch. — Mark Roberts

The small launch bay was littered with debris. A powerful breeze tore at his black silk shirt as Kilroy made his way across it to the waiting shuttle, evoking a feeling like the fingers of fate were caressing his body. "The Hammer" stepped over the body of one of his fallen crew without a trace of care or concern. The air was rushing past him, like a wind, out into space through the wounds in the side of his ship. Fatigued and desperate, the Hammer was running out of options. His ship was a mess, holed in a dozen places, the life support systems failing. Weakened hull sections were collapsing in pressure bursts. The vibrations that shook the deck beneath him now were not from the engines that once drove her forward, but now from the explosions down below, tearing her apart. — Christina Engela

The rockets light! The shuttle leaps off the launch pad in a cloud of steam and a trail of fire. — Sally Ride

It would be sad if the expertise built up during the 40 years of the U.S. and Russian manned programmes were allowed to dissipate. But abandoning the shuttle, and committing to new launch vehicles and propulsion systems, is actually a prerequisite for a vibrant manned programme. — Martin Rees

The launch of a space shuttle can still make you weep with amazement and wonder, if you happen to be watching it. — Hanna Rosin

I think the Space Shuttle is worth one billion dollars a launch. I think that it is worth two billion dollars for what it does. I think the Shuttle is worth it for the work it does. — Pete Conrad

The torpedo launch console has big square plastic buttons - Flood Tube, Open Shuttle, Ready to Fire - that flash red or green, like something Q would have built into James Bond's Aston Martin. The missile compartment has similarly retro-looking panels of buttons. They provided the setup for one of the more quotable things Murray said to me - a line that, were fewer precautions in place, could have joined "Houston, we've had a problem" or "Watch this" in the pantheon of understated taglines for calamity: "I wouldn't lean on that. — Mary Roach

But if you caught my informant,' said Achilles, 'why in the world would Chamrajnagar - or Graff, if it was him - launch the shuttle anyway? Was catching me doing something naughty so important they'd risk a shuttle and it's crew just to catch me? I find that quite ... flattering. Sort of like winning the Nobel Prize for scariest villain. — Orson Scott Card

The pressure suit helps if something goes wrong during launch or re-entry - astronauts have a way to parachute off the shuttle. The suits protect you from loss of pressure in case of emergency. — Sally Ride

The Congresswoman was depressed by the fact that a woman of her standing could no longer count on making it to the rest room "in time" during the extensive rehabilitation that followed her shooting. Her husband, commander of a space shuttle crew, encouraged her by identifying with her limitation. Even revered astronauts, he revealed, have bodily limits and have to rely on Huggies during extended launch exercises. — Gabrielle Giffords

To be an engineer, and build a marvelous machine, and to see the beauty of its operation is as valid an experience of beauty as a mathematician's absorption in a wondrous theorem. One is not "more" beautiful than the other. To see a space shuttle standing on the launch pad, the vented gases escaping, and witness the thunderous blast-off as it climbs heavenward on a pillar of flame - this is beauty. Yet it is a prime example of applied mathematics. — Calvin C. Clawson