Quotes & Sayings About Space 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

The shuttle tomorrow is truly like laying the last spike on the transcontinental railroad, only much more so. And whether or not we're going to see in in the next 10 or 20 years, there are people alive today who will see manufacturing in space from moon materials or from asteroids. — Jerry Brown

'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

So modern neuroimaging is like asking an astronaut in the space shuttle to look out the window and judge how America is doing. — David Eagleman

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

Two things can take you to the Moon: A space shuttle or a sweet love! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

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

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

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

Our nation is indeed fortunate that we can still draw on an immense reservoir of courage, character, and fortitude, that we are still blessed with heroes like those of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Man will continue his conquest of space. To reach out for new goals and ever-greater achievements, that is the way we shall commemorate our seven Challenger heroes. — Ronald Reagan

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

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

In the 1990s, it's OK to do comedy about the Chernobyl disaster or the Space Shuttle blowing up. It's acceptable to ridicule the Pope or the President of the United States, but God forbid you do a joke ... about gays. The gay community is the last sacred cow in this society. — Sam Kinison

I will go around the space shuttle and give a guided tour of the major areas and describe what is done in each area. This will be called The Ultimate Field Trip. — Christa McAuliffe

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

[On Richard P. Feynman's live demonstration of the rigidity of the O-rings when cold that doomed the space shuttle Challenger, killing seven astronauts:] The public saw with their own eyes how science is done, how a great scientist thinks with his hands, how nature gives a clear answer when a scientist asks her a clear question. — Freeman Dyson

Every astronaut flew into space for a living. But while NASA has not solved the security problems, I would not put me back into a shuttle - and no other astronaut. The confidence is shaken. — Ulrich Walter

When I was a kid, I was a bit of a space geek. I loved the space program and all things NASA. I would read books about our solar system; I had pictures of the Space Shuttle on my bedroom wall. And yes, I even went to Space Camp. — Simon Sinek

Instead of planning the retirement of the Space Shuttle program, America should be preparing the shuttles for their next step in space: evolving, not shutting them down and laying off thousands of people. — Buzz Aldrin

There's a huge amount of pressure on every astronaut, because when you get right down to it, the experiments that are conducted on a space flight, or the satellites that are carried up, the work that's to be done, is important and expensive work, and you are up there for a week or two on a Space Shuttle flight. The country has invested a lot of money in you and your training, and the Space Shuttle and everything that's in it, and you have to do things correctly. You can't make a mistake during that week or two that you're in space. — Sally Ride

We have lost one shuttle for every 57 flights and that is not a good ratio. I do believe we need to continue space flights, but maybe we can follow the example of the Russians and use unmanned vehicles to transport hardware into space. — Lincoln Davis

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

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

In my mind I needed a symbol of today's technology, and I realized that what I wanted to photograph was the Space Shuttle. And so that's where Places of Power came into being. — John Sexton

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God. — Ronald Reagan

You know something I could really do without? The Space Shuttle ... It's irresponsible. The last thing we should be doing is sending our grotesquely distorted DNA out into space. — George Carlin

In the space shuttle program, where we had males and females, I can tell you that nobody was doing that [sex] because there's absolutely no privacy. The only privacy would have been in the air lock, but everybody would know what you were doing. You're not out there doing a spacewalk. There's no reason to be in there. — Mike Mullane

Not until the space shuttle started flying did NASA concede that some astronauts didn't have to be fast-jet pilots. And at that point, sure enough, women started becoming astronauts. — Henry Spencer

There is just no way that I can understand in God's green earth that an airline could undertake with its normal procedures the operation of the Space Shuttle ... You don't put parachutes on airliners because the margin of safety is built into the machine. The 727 airplanes we fly are proven vehicles with levels of safety and redundancy built in. The shuttle is a hand-made piece of experimental gear. — Frank Borman

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle. — Sally Ride

After the loss of Columbia a couple of years ago, I think we were reminded of the risk. All of us, though, have always known that the Space Shuttle is a very risky vehicle, much more risky than even flying airplanes in combat. — Mark Kelly

It's very sad that there's going to be a hiatus in manned space flight from the U.S. The Shuttle was a fantastic, hugely complex vehicle. It was inevitable it would come to an end, but this is the opportunity for the commercial world to get involved. As the Shuttle era ends, another window of opportunity opens. — David Mackay

When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless ... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet. — Sally Ride

I would still like to go up in the space shuttle. It's appalling that the accident happened, but it was an accident and obviously if I knew there was any risk, I'd be foolish to do it. I'd love to stand outside the Earth and look at it. Extraordinary feeling that, something that we've been tied to for millions of years, and a handful of people have looked at it, to be able to do that would be stunning. — Colin Baker

Without electricity or gas, the kitchen became a twilight mausoleum of dead appliances. One day, Natasha had an idea. Wearing latex gloves she found in Sonja's room, she scrubbed the innards of the oven and refrigerator with steel wool and bleach. She cut a broomstick to the width of the refrigerator compartment, jammed it in below the thermostat control, and pulled out the plastic shelves. In her bedroom, she gathered clothes from the floor in sweeping armfuls and deposited them before the refrigerator and the oven. Ever since she had begun working for the shuttle trader, her wardrobe exceeded her closet space. She hung silk evening dresses and cashmere sweaters on the broomstick bar, set folded jeans and blouses on the oven rack. When finished, she opened the doors to her new closet and bureau and felt pleased with her ingenuity. This is how you will survive, she told herself. You will turn the holes in your life into storage space. — Anthony Marra

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

They didn't tell me I was going into space until after they locked the shuttle doors and started counting down. — Buzz Aldrin

And yet ...
But what if ...
I want to do something impossible. Something astounding and unheard of. I want to scrub the moss off the Space Shuttle and fly Julie to the moon and colonise it, or float a capsized cruise ship to some distant island where no one will protest us, or just harness the magic that brings me into the brains of the Living and use it to bring Julie into mine, because it's warm in here, it's quiet and lovely, and in here we aren't an absurd juxtaposition, we are perfect. — Isaac Marion

Together the five orbiters Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour have flown a total of 133 successful missions, an unequaled accomplishment of engineering, management, and political savvy. But it's the two disasters that people remember, that most shape the shuttle's story. The lovely dream of spaceflight I grew up with is marred by the images of Challenger and Columbia breaking apart in the sky, the lost astronauts smiling on hopefully in their portraits, oblivious. Some people took the disasters to mean the entire space program had been a lie, that the dream itself was tainted with our fallibility. But even as a child, I knew it was more complex than that. If we want to see people take risks, we have to be prepared to sometimes see them fail. The story of American spaceflight is a story with many endings, a story of how we have weighed our achievements against our failures. — Margaret Lazarus Dean

Dad, one of my first memories is of sharing my worry with you about the space shuttle poking holes in the atmosphere and letting out all of Earth's air. — Brent Weeks

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

I don't have many fears other than being unemployed, homeless, friendless, rejected by my family, covered with honey and tied to a bed of fire ants, the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz, squash, computer paper, ghosts named Maggie, falling out of the space shuttle right before it leaves the Earth's atmosphere, licorice, elves, lawnmowers, unwashed hands, waking hours and being romantically linked to Madonna and Alex Rodriguez. — Cary Clack

After the Shuttle checks out on its two upcoming flights, it will be ready to take larger components up to the International Space Station later this fall. — Marc Garneau

Having the opportunity to fly the first flight of something like a space shuttle was the ultimate test flight. — Robert Crippen

Space travel is the only technology that is more dangerous and more expensive now than it was in its first year. Fifty years after Yuri Gagarin, the space shuttle ended up being more dangerous and more expensive to fly than those first throwaway rockets, even though large portions of it were reusable. It's absurd. — Burt Rutan

NASA is developing space taxis to shuttle astronauts to the International Space Station. And just like New York taxis, they're all going to be driven by aliens. — Jimmy Fallon

The Space Shuttle will stop directly below the Space Station and Sergei and I will be looking out two different windows looking straight down at the Space Shuttle. — John L. Phillips

The Space Shuttle is the most effective device known to man for destroying dollar bills. — Dana Rohrabacher

Manned spaceflight has lost its glamour - understandably so, because it hardly seems inspiring, 40 years after Apollo, for astronauts merely to circle the Earth in the space shuttle and the International Space Station. — Martin Rees

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was hard to become an astronaut. Not anywhere near as much physical training as people imagine, but a lot of mental training, a lot of learning. You have to learn everything there is to know about the Space Shuttle and everything you are going to be doing, and everything you need to know if something goes wrong, and then once you have learned it all, you have to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice until everything is second nature, so it's a very, very difficult training, and it takes years. — Sally Ride

By 1931, after a few years' experience of flying scheduled airlines, those planes were operating at roughly 600 times the safety of the space shuttle. I look at safety not in terms of fatalities per passenger-mile, but when you get in and close the door, what is the risk of dying on this flight? — Burt Rutan

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

And as we know now, and as I pointed out many times, the great plume of fire at the bottom of the Space Shuttle is actually dollar bills burning, and the most efficient method of destroying American dollar bills as has ever been devised by man. — Dana Rohrabacher

I witnessed the building of the Space Shuttle Columbia, the first orbiter to be launched into space. — Rene Burri

A lot of these things will fly in later forms on the space station themselves, or a later form of that research will, once they kind of find out some of the basics from flying it on shuttle. — Linda M. Godwin

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

I remember reading that the space shuttle uses more fuel during its first three minutes after liftoff than during its entire voyage around the earth, — Robin S. Sharma

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

The seven of us on board [the Space Shuttle] represented five different religions. But we were all agreed - it just doesn't make sense how people on earth treat each other. It doesn't make any difference what language we speak. It doesn't make any difference what country we come from. It certainly doesn't make any difference what the color of our skin is. We are all children of God traveling on spaceship earth together. — Jake Garn

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

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

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

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

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

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