Quotes & Sayings About Shuttle

Three years after the United States ended the space shuttle program, the American space agency today announced the return of "human space flight to U.S. soil." NASA has chosen two spaceships, the Boeing CST-100 and SpaceX Dragon version 2, to bring American astronauts to the International Space Station. The program will cost $6.8 billion. — Anonymous

I closed my eyelids, and imagination, taking up the thread of thought, shot its swift shuttle back across the ages, weaving a picture on their blackness so real and vivid in its details that I could almost for a moment think that I had triumphed o'er the Past, and that my spirit's eyes had pierced the mystery of Time. — H. Rider Haggard

'As a fraction of your tax dollar today, what is the total cost of all spaceborne telescopes, planetary probes, the rovers on Mars, the International Space Station, the space shuttle, telescopes yet to orbit, and missions yet to fly?' Answer: one-half of one percent of each tax dollar. Half a penny. I'd prefer it were more: perhaps two cents on the dollar. Even during the storied Apollo era, peak NASA spending amounted to little more than four cents on the tax dollar. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

You can't get on my level. you gon' need a space shuttle or a ladder; that's forever. — Lil' Wayne

Every generation has the illusion that things were easier and better in a simpler past. Dead wrong. Things are better today than at any time in human history. Our primal ignorance is what keeps us whacking each other over the head with sticks, and not what allows us to paint a Mona Lisa or design a space shuttle. The 'primal ignorance that keeps us happy' gives rise to obesity and global warming, not antibiotics or the Magna Carta. If human kind flourishes rather than flounders over the next thousand years, it will be because we fully embraced learning and reason, and not because we surrendered to some fantasy about returning to a world that never really was. — Daniel Todd Gilbert

Look for it in the wintertime, if you want to find The Light Of The Season - the real light, not the Hallmark one. Look for the location of resistance. Look for the darkness in which you can be a spark. Look for the opportunity to be bright, to light someone else's way, to warm their hands, to shuttle them safely through the dark. Look for the crack you can fill or the shadow you can dispel by bringing a little bit of the light of resistance, carefully and precisely, to just the place where it is needed. Look for the place of being bright - of being bright and present outside your own house, or in the window, on the opposite side to the mezuzah, letting anyone who passes know. We are here. — S. Bear Bergman

Think of me if you will as the Lady of Shalott ... who chooses to watch diligently the bright colours of her Web - to ply an industrious shuttle - to make - something - to close the Shutters and the Peephole too - — A.S. Byatt

If you gave kids peas that didn't look like peas and said they were a space shuttle, they're much more apt to eat them because it's now playtime. — Hod Lipson

As I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and communion, sincerity and simulation, ambition and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything else matters but me. — Stephen Fry

The space shuttle was designed, at least in part, to broaden our knowledge of the universe. To scientists, the vehicle was a tool; to engineers, it was their creation. — Henry Petroski

The real Journey is a personal venture into your own mind content. Nobody, not the greatest mystic, the most vaunted guru, the most hailed psychologist, though they might shuttle you along the trail for a ways, will get you there. Only you yourself can do that. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

Even with only two people on board, where maintenance is a large piece of our working day, we still have time to do scientific research. We have to be ready to support those Shuttle visits in a lot of different ways. — John L. Phillips

We can take the shuttle at the South Station for Battery Street, and after that the walk isn't much. — H.P. Lovecraft

On the wall of his rehabilitation room was a picture of the space shuttle blasting off, autographed by every astronaut now at NASA. On top of the picture it says, "We found nothing is impossible." That should be our motto. — Christopher Reeve

I've got a bunch of plumbers with rifles I could put on a shuttle. The bridge went quiet. — James S.A. Corey

He [Wordsworth] invited his readers to abandon their usual perspective and to consider for a time how the world might look through other eyes, to shuttle between the human and the natural perspective. Why might this be interesting, or even inspiring? Perhaps because unhappiness can stem from only having one perspective to play with. — Alain De Botton

Having three operational vehicles in the fleet affords the shuttle program great schedule flexibility as we move toward flying safely and completing the international space station. — Wayne Hale

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

My job in space will be to observe and write a journal. I am also going to be teaching a class for students on earth about life in space and on the space shuttle and conducting experiments. — Christa McAuliffe

If you ever care to see how all the world's most awful jokes spread, spend a day on a bond trading desk. When the Challenger space shuttle disintegrated, six people called me from six points on the globe to explain that NASA stands for Need Another Seven Astronauts. — Michael Lewis

I'm honored to be the first woman to have the opportunity to command the shuttle. I don't really think about that on a day-to-day basis because I really don't need to. — Eileen Collins

The Columbia accident made us realize that we had been playing Russian roulette with the shuttle crews
that we had been very, very fortunate in the past that the foam did not cause critical damage. — Wayne Hale

Taking a shuttle or even paying for a taxi to a rental office that's a few miles away from the airport can mean a lower rate - 50 percent lower is common - for the same car, from the same company, for the same length of time. Many companies run free shuttles from some of the major airports. — Jean Chatzky

I am definitely a little more nervous for my colleagues when I'm working at mission control than I am myself, on the shuttle. — Julie Payette

Think about it, Lee - we already know that intelligent minds produce finely tuned devices. Look at the space shuttle. Look at a television set. Look at an internal combustion engine. We see minds producing complex, precision machinery all the time.

So the existence of a supermind - or God - as the explanation for the fine - tuning of the universe makes all sense in the world. — Lee Strobel

Do you know who takes weekday shuttle flights between Washington and New York? People who think they are too important for the train, let alone the bus. — Alex Pareene

The money that could have saved the Shuttle, and the money we send to random countries, that we use to remake unchangeable countries ten thousand miles away. — Dave Eggers

New Rule: Since our new national position on science is, "Screw it, we prefer witchcraft," let's not just retire the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Let's drive it to one of the five stupidest States and have the locals beat it with sticks. Putting it in a museum is too dangerous. Someone could steal it, fly it into space and notice we revolve around the sun. — Bill Maher

I think both the space shuttle program and the International Space Station program have not really lived up to their expectations. — Buzz Aldrin

Two subsequent incidents of import established CNN: the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, which CNN was the only network to cover as it happened, and the 1991 Gulf War, which CNN chronicled round the clock from a proximity as irresistible as it was alarming, bomb blasts and gunfire lighting up TV screens from coast to coast. — Steve Erickson

Rowing was not simple for me. I nodded whenever the instructor made a point, as if I understood, but I could as easily have assembled the space shuttle as have repeated the moves she was explaining. — Barry S. Strauss

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it seems to make things harder, leaving us with fifty-button remote controls, digital cameras with hundreds of mysterious features and book-length manuals, and cars with dashboard systems worthy of the space shuttle. — James Surowiecki

This is pretty hard on the Elders, is it not? If they could remember one thousandth part of that which they have heard, it would have sanctified them years and years ago; but it goes in at one ear and out at the other
it is like the weaver's shuttle passing through the web. — Brigham Young

Shaman is a spiritual shuttle between three realms of existence: Heaven, Mankind and Earth. He pierces through inter-dimensional veils in order to heal the parts and unite the whole. — Lada Ray

The night is quiet. Like a camp before battle. The city beset by a thing unknown and will it come from forest or sea? The murengers have walled the pale, the gates are shut, but lo the thing's inside and can you guess his shape? Where he's kept or what's the counter of his face? Is he a weaver, bloody shuttle shot through a time warp, a carder of souls from the world's nap? Or a hunter with hounds or do bone horses draw his dead cart through the streets and does he call his trade to each? Dear friend he is not to be dwelt upon for it is by just such wise that he's invited in — Cormac McCarthy

Then during the mission itself, I used the space shuttle's robot arm to release a satellite into orbit. — Sally Ride

Sometimes you gotta say what's in your heart... And you have to stand for what you believe. No matter what."
~'Dr. Michael C. Anders, — Stephanie Osborn

Nero, you are an example to all the children on this shuttle. Because most of them are so foolish, they think it is better to keep their stupidest thoughts to themselves. You, however, understand the profound truth that you must reveal your stupidity openly. To hold your stupidity inside you is to embrace it, to cling to it, to protect it. But when you expose your stupidity, you give yourself the chance to have it caught, corrected, and replaced with wisdom. Be brave, all of you, like Nero Boulanger, and when you have a thought of such surpassing ignorance that you think it's actually smart, make sure to make some noise, to let your mental limitations squeak out some whimpering fart of a thought, so that you have a chance to learn. — 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 mind is the seat of perception of the things we see, hear, and feel. It is through the mind that we see the beauties of the earth and sky, or music, of art, in fact, of everything. That silent shuttle of thought working in and out through cell and nerve weaves into one harmonious whole the myriad moods of mind, and we call it life. — Charles Fillmore

I had no inkling of how crazy the political life would turn out to be. You shuttle between your constituency and Ottawa, you try to make every barbecue, festival, parade and charity run, but sometimes you feel pulled in 14 directions at once. — Michael Ignatieff

Ironically, it is only when disaster strikes that the shuttle makes the headlines. Its routine flights attracted less media interest than unmanned probes to the planets or the images from the Hubble Telescope. The fate of Columbia (like that of Challenger in 1986) reminded us that space is still a hazardous environment. — Martin Rees

I've had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride. — Chris Hadfield

To call a Christian a theist is roughly equivalent to calling the space shuttle Atlantis a glider. — R.C. Sproul

The Shuttle is to space flight what Lindbergh was to commercial aviation. — Arthur C. Clarke

The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn't even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we'd never have had the light bulb. — Elon Musk

People who need regulation often leave therapy sessions feeling calmer, stronger, safer, more able to handle the world. Often they don't know why. Nothing obviously helpful happened - telling a stranger about your pain sounds nothing like a certain recipe for relief. And the feeling inevitably dwindles, sometimes within minutes, taking the warmth and security with it. But the longer a patient depends, the more his stability swells, expanding infinitesimally with ever session as length is added to a woven cloth with each pass of the shuttle, each contraction of the loom. And after he weaves enough of it, the day comes when the patient will unfurl his independence like a pair of spread wings. Free at last, he catches a wind and rides into other lands. (172) — Thomas Lewis

There you have it. We go in General Celchu's shuttle."
"Much as I personally want you to succeed in this, I sort of have to say no. Duty and officer's oaths and all that. You understand."
"Oh, that's right." Luke turned to Wedge. "Could I trouble you to set your blaster on stun and point it at the other general?"
"No, not really."
"Please?"
Wedge sighed. "I'm not going to point a blaster at my best friend. Plus, his pilot will be obliged to jump in the way or do something equally noble and foolish. I'm not going to point a blaster at my little girl."
"Thank you, Daddy. — Troy Denning

There's no way you can use water to collect waste in zero gravity. So, basically, our toilet on shuttle operations is a vacuum cleaner. The urinal looks like a Shop-Vac hose. It has different-shaped fronts on it for males and females to use. The urine is sucked down that hose and goes into a tank. — Mike Mullane

She imagined him leaning against the shuttle, entertaining thoughts of scolding her for dressing like a ragged commoner. Never mind that her present outfit was light years ahead in comfort.

(Actually, he's wishing he had been less critical of you earlier. He feels bad that you won't acknowledge his presence, and he blames himself.)

(Quit it, Ian. I'm not going to feel sorry for him.)

She caught her protector's shrewd grin, highlighted by the fire's glow. (You already do, Queenie.)

(This talent of yours is really annoying.)

He leaned close to her ear and whispered, "That's not what you thought earlier when you wanted to get ahold of Efren."

"One tiny rosebud in a handful of thorns," she retorted. — Richelle E. Goodrich

So, for me, I make no difference whether I'm training with my shuttle crew or the Expedition crew. Of course, I think I want to take more care of the Expedition crew, because they're going to stay there for a long time. — Philippe Perrin

It can come a bit hard sometimes to see one's own unique, heroic life pinned so pitilessly to a wall. At other times it can endorse, affirm and save, but as I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything else matters at all but me. — Stephen Fry

If the hammer and the shuttle could move themselves, slavery would be unnecessary. — Aristotle.

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 shuttle bumped, bounced, banged, rocked, and roared out over the flat, cracked surface. She was sorry she had never made a pass at Leo. Clearly, you could die while waiting for other people to start your life for you. Her seat harness cut across her breasts as deceleration sucked her forward and the rumbling vibration rattled her teeth. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality, understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough to be actively trying to eliminate them. They must live in a world of reality in comparing the costs and utility of the shuttle to other methods of entering space. And they must be realistic in making contracts and in estimating the costs and difficulties of each project. Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed -- schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support NASA, the so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources. — Richard Feynman

One downward cut, she saw. One quick, final strike, and she could kill him. The landing lights of a shuttle appeared in the distance, coming over the trees in her direction. She had to make a decision, now. Kill him, a voice inside her head said. It was amorphous, unidentifiable, raw. Pure vengeful emotion. So easy, she told herself. So quick. — Alan Dean Foster

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. — Leroy Chiao

At that point, there will be the handover between the shuttle arm and the station arm so that the shuttle arm will take the cradle and put it into the cargo bay. — Umberto Guidoni

Ray seemed about to say something more when a boom shook the entire shuttle. I felt a rush of panic, thinking we'd just come under attack. Then I realized we'd just broken the sound barrier. — Ernest Cline

The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident. — Sally Ride

We have played a critical role in meeting the new safety standards. The Canadian space industry contributed new tools that make the inspection of the space shuttle possible. — Marc Garneau

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

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

I used to let the olde english 8- suds bubble in the last car of the Franklin Avenue shuttle — KRS-One

I am surprised." She scanned the script rapidly. "Th-this is a p-pack of lies!" He looked worried. "Have you always had that little speech impediment?" he asked cautiously. "N-no, it's my souvenir from the Escobaran psych service, and the l-late war. Who came up with this g-garbage, anyway?" The line that particularly caught her eye referred to "the cowardly Admiral Vorkosigan and his pack of ruffians." "Vorkosigan's the bravest man I ever met." Gould took her firmly by the upper arm, and guided her to the shuttle hatch. "We have to go, now, to make the holovid timing. Maybe you can just leave that line out, all right? Now, smile. — Lois McMaster Bujold

NASA's training philosophy is "no surprises." So what they did is put a simulator on Earth where it looks exactly the same as a shuttle toilet and they put a camera down in the bottom of the opening for solid-waste collection, with a light that basically illuminates your asshole. — Mike Mullane

My daughter just thinks that all moms fly the Space Shuttle — Eileen Collins

Our shuttle crew is four people, because we're going to transfer a crew up to station, so all the jobs are divided between four people rather than five or six people. So it's been busy. — Linda M. Godwin

NASA asked me to create meals for the space shuttle. Thai chicken was the favorite. I flew in a fake space shuttle, but I have no desire to go into space after seeing the toilet. — Rachael Ray

When I did my spacewalks, it was during space station construction. So the shuttle was docked to the fledgling ISS at the time. So we would always stay tethered. — Chris Hadfield

I would much rather fly on Soyuz than the shuttle. — Helen Sharman

After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the things that had gone wrong. — Sally Ride

Avoid the traffic by using one of the park's shuttle buses and view the elk rut with a park ranger. — Dave Barry

I'll be the person using the shuttle robotic arm. — Linda M. Godwin

The Twilight Zone' wasn't around with the kids. They think going up in space is neat. Within their lifetime, there will be paying passengers on the shuttle. — Christa McAuliffe

Time is the warp and matter the weft of the woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurling shuttle. — Annie Dillard

Poetry has an immediate effect on the mind. The simple act of reading poetry alters thought patterns and the shuttle of the breath. Poetry induces trance. Its words are chant. Its rhythms drumbeats. Its images become the icons of the inner eye. Poetry is more than a description of the sacred experience; it carries the experience itself. — Ivan M. Granger

I had been here five years already, training very hard, learning about the systems, the shuttle, the station systems. But, everything really became real when I started to work with them. — Philippe Perrin

Describing the Internet as the Network of Networks is like calling the Space Shuttle, a thing that flies. — Jon Lester

He could feel all of it so clearly it was as if it were happening right then. But more than that, he felt sorrow. Someone had just tried to do the same thing to his baby girl. Had tried to kill her, not because he hated her, but because she was standing in the path of his political statement. Everyone who died on that shuttle had been a Felcia to someone. And with the click of a button he'd killed them. He — James S.A. Corey

All right," she snaps at the computer. "I get it. I'm slowing down! Gods!"
"Activating Generic Ocular Display Sequence. G.O.D.S."
The front of her shuttle goes transparent and Vol experiences a nauseating wave of vertigo.
"No, that's not what I meant! It's an expression! What the hell?"
"Error. Request must be made in the form of a command."
"Oh, f*** you."
"Error. Command not recognised."
"I'm not surprised," Vol mutters. — Nenia Campbell

Well, with so many space shuttle missions that we've done, I think it's just sort of natural that each one hasn't necessarily gotten the attention that the early ones did. — Ellen Ochoa

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

In 2009 I went up on the space shuttle. I was in space for 16 days and docked at the space station for 11 days. The entire crew did five space walks, of which I was involved with three of them. When you're doing a space walk, you always have a buddy with you. It's a very dangerous environment when you're doing a space walk. — Thomas Marshburn

Histories of the Kennedy Space Center acknowledge without exaggeration that the obstacle posed by the mosquitoes was so serious that NASA quite literally could not have put a man on the moon by Kennedy's "before the decade is out" deadline without the invention of DDT. In this way, the challenges of spaceflight reveal themselves to be distinctly terrestrial. — Margaret Lazarus Dean

Get the shuttle out of the garage. It's in its prime of its life. How could we just put it away? — Eugene Cernan

The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home. — George W. Bush

I know how to learn anything I want to learn. I absolutely know that I could learn how to fly the space shuttle because someone else knows how to fly it, and they put it in a book. Give me the book, and I do not need somebody to stand up in front of the class. — Will Smith

NASA works for the White House. There are many at NASA that wish they were building a modern replacement for the Shuttle. However, they had marching orders to instead work on other things, some of which should have no place in a research organization. — Burt Rutan

Although I know a lot of the previous shuttle flights, in theory, had their tasks laid out; but there were still some changes that came along for them. — Linda M. Godwin

Beings with un-redeemed earthly karma are not permitted after astral death to go to the high causal sphere of cosmic ideas , but must shuttle to and fro from the physical and astral worlds. — Sri Yukteswar Giri

The thing I remember most about space is the view from the spacewalk. When I was inside the space shuttle and looking through the window, you can see the earth and the stars, and it's very beautiful, but it's like looking at an aquarium, sort of. When you go outside and spacewalk, you become a scuba diver. — Michael J. Massimino

Living inside the shuttle was a little like camping out. We ended up sleeping in our seats. You had to pay attention to housekeeping, not get things too dirty. — Robert Crippen

We're still going to Loggerhead this afternoon, right?" Hi glanced around, then dropped his voice. "For that ... home movie thing?"
I nodded. "We might as well deal with what we can. Let's take the afternoon shuttle. I'll think of an excuse for Kit, thought I'm open to suggestions."
"Ben?" Shelton asked.
"Not today. I think the two of us need a little distance."
The bell rang. We gathered our things and headed for the door.
"Tell Kit we're cutting a music video," Hi suggested as we walked. "Something real gangster, so we need to smash-cut our dance routines. Lay down some visuals. We could offer to let him rap over the second verse."
I gave him a thumbs-up. "Foolproof. Anyone need a locker stop? — Kathy Reichs

In this part of Canada, it was assumed that the passengers would provide each other with entertainment. — Beatrice Rose Roberts

The space shuttle has been a fantastic vehicle. It is unlike any other thing that we've ever built. Its capabilities have carried several hundred people into space. — Robert Crippen

Attention, aboard the shuttle! You are under arrest! Surrender immediately! Come out slowly, in single file, with your hands behind your heads! Leave all weapons behind. Comply and your lives will be spared! — Christina Engela

My job during the EVAs, the spacewalks, is to act as the inside coordinator. I remain on the aft flight deck of the shuttle, and I act in a manner to help the gentlemen outside, my fellow crewmates, who are performing the EVA tasks. — Alan G. Poindexter

Within NASA, the shuttle is perhaps the least-groundbreaking project. Recall that Apollo was about creating brand-new technologies that did something unprecedented - putting men on the moon. The shuttle is, by comparison, a relic designed to make going into orbit routine. — Nathan Myhrvold