Space From Astronauts Quotes & Sayings

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

Astronauts will remain the explorers, the pioneers-the first to go back to moon and on to Mars. But I think it's really important to make space space available to as many people as we can. It's going to be a while before we can launch people for less than $20 million a ticket. But that day is coming. — Sally Ride

I'm Chinese-American, of course, and so it's very interesting to see China actually launch their own astronauts, becoming the third nation, following the United States and Russia, to do so. — Leroy Chiao

I ran the astronaut school for six years, and I was the commandant and when I finished in '65, 26 of my guys went into space as NASA astronauts that I trained. — Chuck Yeager

Mars missions will require up to three years in reduced gravity, so we need to make sure astronauts can not only survive but thrive as they move outward to explore this new world. — Ellen Stofan

I think most astronauts are not risk takers. We take calculated risks for something that we think is worthwhile. — Michael J. Massimino

I would require every producer of food to follow and have enforced a standard safety plan. We know how to produce safe food. It has a horrible name; it's called HACCP - Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point - and this was a food safety system that was developed for NASA so that astronauts wouldn't get sick in outer space. If you just think about what it might be like to have food poison under conditions of zero gravity, you don't even want to think about it. — Marion Nestle

It's very dangerous to put astronauts on a moon base where there's radiation, solar flares and micro meteorites. It'd be much better to put robots on the moon and have them mentally connected to astronauts on the Earth. — Michio Kaku

Astronauts are very professional and when they're preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives. — Ellen Ochoa

Ben Affleck (who plays A.J. Frost) and I got to actually go into the neutral buoyancy tank in actual $10 million spacesuits the astronauts wear in outer space, and that was pretty interesting — Bruce Willis

The images of Earth's delicate biosphere, contrasting with the sterile moonscape where the astronauts left their footsteps, have become iconic for environmentalists: these may indeed be the Apollo programme's most enduring legacy. — Martin Rees

One Chief Astronaut used to make a point of phoning the front desk at the clinic where applicants are sent for medical testing, to find out which ones treated the staff well - and which ones stood out in a bad way. The nurses and clinic staff have seen a whole lot of astronauts over the years, and they know what the wrong stuff looks like. A person with a superiority complex might unwittingly, right there in the waiting room, quash his or her chances of ever going to space. — Chris Hadfield

So most astronauts getting ready to lift off are excited and very anxious and worried about that explosion - because if something goes wrong in the first seconds of launch, there's not very much you can do. — Sally Ride

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

While we've taken seeds into space, and astronauts on the International Space Station have eaten lettuce they've grown, we haven't produced fruit in space, so we can't pollinate something. — Helen Sharman

We want to make sure we get living astronauts to the surface of Mars. — Ellen Stofan

Before we had airplanes and astronauts, we really thought that there was an actual place beyond the clouds, somewhere over the rainbow. There was an actual place, and we could go above the clouds and find it there. — Barbara Walters

The photographs of space taken by our astronauts have been published all over the place. But the eye is a much more dynamic mechanism than any camera or pictures. It's a more exciting view in person than looking at the photographs. Of course, I personally am sick and tired of hearing people talk like that: I want to see it myself! — Burt Rutan

I'm not a risk taker. But astronauts are professionals, so you get out on the field and play ball. I tried to take it in stride because that's what I had to do to get into space. That's where I belong, and I'm pretty good at it. — Story Musgrave

We're giving each other space."
"You know what I think?"
He shook his head.
"Space is for astronauts." — Anna McPartlin

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

Did you know that in space it's very, very cold? And there's no oxygen? And if an astronaut fell out of a shuttle without his suit he'd die right away?"
I'm a fast learner. "But that would never happen. Because astronauts are really, really careful."
George gives me a smile, the same dazzling sweet smile as his big brother, although at this point, with green teeth. "I might marry you," he allows. "Do you want a big family? — Huntley Fitzpatrick

Asking how astronauts go to the bathroom is one of the most common questions put during NASA or space museum outreach sessions. To cope with the curiosity, for a while the agency posted a video that featured a fully-clothed volunteer showing exactly how it was done: with a mirror, sometimes. Young is often asked about it. "Interest from the public is strange. Women don't care. They think, they worked it out and that's that. Men have an almost unhealthy interest. Children are interested in the poop factor." What everybody should actually be interested in is the drinking pee factor. — Rose George

For the first time American astronauts on the International Space Station ate vegetables grown in space. In other words, even space is getting more rain than California. — Conan O'Brien

Our astronauts, when they go orbiting around the earth, they actually come back slightly younger than a twin that they would have on the planet Earth who was stationary. This is called the twin paradox. — Michio Kaku

The powered flight took a total of about eight and a half minutes. It seemed to me it had gone by in a lash. We had gone from sitting still on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center to traveling at 17,500 miles an hour in that eight and a half minutes. It is still mind-boggling to me. I recall making some statement on the air-to-ground radio for the benefit of my fellow astronauts, who had also been in the program a long time, that it was well worth the wait. — Robert Crippen

From day one, I have been told I am no different from the male astronauts. As a pilot, I flew in the sky. Now that I am an astronaut, I will fly in space. — Liu Yang

No, I think most astronauts recognize that the space shuttle program is very high-risk, and are prepared for accidents. — Sally Ride

Space is for everybody. It's not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That's our new frontier out there, and it's everybody's business to know about space. — Christa McAuliffe

There's a latter-day notion that artsy hippie types in the 1960s disdained the space program. Not in my experience they didn't. We watched, transfixed with reverence, not even making rude remarks about President Nixon during his phone call to the astronauts. — Patrick Nielsen Hayden

When provoked, the itsy-bitsy invertebrates known as tardigrades can suspend their metabolism. In that state, they can survive temperatures of ... 73 K for days on end, making them hardy enough to endure being stranded on Neptune. So the next time you need space travelers with the right stuff, you might want to choose yeast and tardigrades, and leave your astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts at home. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

As suburban children we floated at night in swimming pools the temperature of blood; pools the color of Earth as seen from outer space. We would float and be naked - pretending to be embryos, pretending to be fetuses - all of us silent save for the hum of the pool filter. Our minds would be blank and our eyes closed as we floated in warm waters, the distinction between our bodies and our brains reduced to nothing - bathed in chlorine and lit by pure blue lights installed underneath diving boards. Sometimes we would join hands and form a ring like astronauts in space; sometimes when we felt more isolated in our fetal stupor we would bump into each other in the deep end, like twins with whom we didn't even know we shared a womb. — Douglas Coupland

Katherine gave in to the wonder of the moment, imagining herself in the astronauts' place. What emotions welled up from the depths of their hearts as they regarded their watery blue home from the void of space? How did it feel to be separated by a nearly unimaginable gulf from the rest of humanity yet carry the hopes, dreams, and fears of their entire species there with them in their tiny, vulnerable craft? Most people she knew wouldn't have traded places with the astronauts for all of the gold in Fort Knox. The men existed all alone out their in the void of space, connected so tenuously to Earth, with the real possibility that something could go wrong. But given the chance to throw her lot in with the astronauts, Katherine Johnson would have packed her bags immediately. Even without the pressure of the space race, even without the mandate to beat the enemy. For Katherine Johnson, curiosity always bested fear. — Margot Lee Shetterly

For years, I longed to hear Armstrong describe what it was like to contemplate Earth from 238,900 miles away. Former Space Center director George Abbey once told me that many NASA astronauts felt that looking at Earth was akin to a religious experience. — Douglas Brinkley

I think that witnessing ecological problems visible from space is one of the new and essential roles of astronauts. — Philippe Perrin

The view of earth is spectacular from space. Most people imagine that when astronauts look out the window of the shuttle they see the whole earth like that big blue marble that was made famous by the flights that went to the moon. But the shuttle is much, much closer than those astronauts were. So we don't see the whole planet, the whole ball at once, we just see parts of it. — Sally Ride

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

The ISS would not be the incredibly capable orbiting research facility it is today without either Russians or Americans, just as it couldn't have been built without the Canadian arm used in its construction. — Ron Garan

There are no wishy-washy astronauts. You don't get up there by being uncaring and blase. And whatever gave you the sense of tenacity and purpose to get that far in life is absolutely reaffirmed and deepened by the experience itself. — Chris Hadfield

The food isn't too bad. It's very different from the food that the astronauts ate in the very early days of the space program. — Sally Ride

Mma Ramotswe found it difficult to imagine what it would be like to have no people. There were, she knew, those who had no others in this life, who had no uncles, or aunts, or distant cousins of any degree; people who were just themselves. Many white people were like that, for some unfathomable reason; they did not seem to want to have people and were happy to be just themselves. How lonely they must be
like spacemen deep in space, floating in darkness, but without even that silver, unfurling cord that linked the astronauts to their little metal womb of oxygen and warmth. For a moment, she indulged the metaphor, and imagined the tiny white van in space, slowly spinning against a background of stars and she, Mma Ramotswe, of the No. 1 Ladies' Space Agency, floating weightless, head over heels, tied to the tiny white van with a thin washing line. — Alexander McCall Smith

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

I can only wonder what astronauts must feel like or something like that when you're really in the space of silence and you are feeling and breathing in a way that you're really aware of your muscle and bone and the breath and the body and the movement and all of those things that just you take for granted in the urban landscape. — DJ Spooky

The whole foot is a document of motion, inscribed by repeated action. Babies - from those first foetal footfalls, the kneading of sole against womb-wall, turning themselves like astronauts in black space - have already creased their soles by the time they emerge into the world. — Robert Macfarlane

It was a mission of celebration: never had two Mexican-Americans flown up in space on the same mission, and never did burritos shine so brightly. — Gustavo Arellano

It is through our technology that we have been able to fly far away from earth to learn, in truth, how precious it is. It is no coincidence that our awakening to the special nature of our world and to its uniquely balanced environment and its limitations coincided with our first glimpse of earth from outer space, through the eyes of astronauts, television cameras and photographic equipment. — Dixie Lee Ray

I've always been a bit of a space geek. I wrote an article years ago about the neutral buoyancy tank, which is this biblically sized pool where they train astronauts. And it was just the coolest thing. — Mary Roach

In 1966, Gregg Hill took the world's laziest summer job. First he was poked and prodded and had his fitness assessed by every technique then known to medicine. Then, for 20 days, he and four other student volunteers became the ultimate couch potatoes, confined to bed - not even allowed to walk to the toilet. The goal was to investigate how astronauts would respond to space flight, but when Hill and his fellows finally staggered to their feet, their drastic deterioration helped spark a revolution in medical care here on Earth. As Rick A. Lovett explains, before the experiment took place, bed rest was recommended for people with weak hearts. Afterward, doctors knew that it made them worse. — Jeremy Webb

I want to launch a globe into space just to mess with the astronauts. — Demetri Martin

I am deeply grieved by the loss of the crew of Columbia. I express my sincere condolences to the families and friends of the astronauts. I believe that their names will remain as the bright sparkling stars in the universe and will light the way for those who will follow them on the difficult roads of space exploration. — Valentina Tereshkova

The majority of astronauts have to change their eyeglasses while in space. They bring eyeglasses with them and typically change a few months into the mission. — Scott Kelly

Astronauts have been stuck in low-Earth orbit, boldly going nowhere. American attempts to kick-start a new phase of lunar exploration have stalled amid the realisation that NASA's budget is too small for the job. — Paul Davies

Ideally, the ISS program will just be one more incremental step on an expanding, incredible journal of exploration and understanding, taking us higher and farther. — Ron Garan

In less than 70 hours, three astronauts will be launched on the flight of Apollo 8 from the Cape Kennedy Space Center on a research journey to circle the moon. This will involve known risks of great magnitude and probable risks which have not been foreseen. Apollo 8 has 5,600,000 parts and 1.5 million systems, subsystems and assemblies. With 99.9 percent reliability, we could expect 5,600 defects. Hence the striving for perfection and the use of redundancy which characterize the Apollo program. — Jerome F. Lederer

There weren't any astronauts until I was about 10. Yuri Gagarin went into space right around my 10th birthday. — John L. Phillips

When I review my travels among the astronauts, my mind's eye goes first to the Houston shopping mall where Alan Bean sat for hours after returning from space, just eating ice cream and watching the people swirl around him, enraptured by the simple yet miraculous fact they they were there and alive in that moment, and so was he. — Andrew Smith

When many astronauts go to space, they see the insignificant size of the earth and vastness of space, and they become very religious, because they have seen the Signs of Allah. — Cat Stevens

Everywhere I go I meet girls and boys who want to be astronauts and explore space, or they love the ocean and want to be oceanographers, or they love animals and want to be zoologists, or they love designing things and want to be engineers. I want to see those same stars in their eyes in 10 years and know they are on their way! — Sally Ride

I claim that space is part of our culture. You've heard complaints that nobody knows the names of the astronauts, that nobody gets excited about launches, that nobody cares anymore except people in the industry. I don't believe that for a minute. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Some astronauts describe the routine flushing of urine into space, where the freezing temperatures turn the droplets into a cloud of bright, drifting crystals, as being among the most amazing sights they saw on an entire voyage. — Eugene Cernan