Space Station Quotes & Sayings

And in that moment, I was hit with the realization that this delicate layer of atmosphere is all that protects every living thing on Earth from perishing in the harshness of space. — Ron Garan

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

All she knew was that a large strawberry-blond man suddenly appeared in her shop, intent on hugging her. This was unusual. To put it mildly, the International Space Station, until now, had never been the kind of place for surprise visits. Larz — Neal Stephenson

'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

The International Space Station is a phenomenal laboratory, an unparalleled test bed for new invention and discovery. Yet I often thought, while silently gazing out the window at Earth, that the actual legacy of humanity's attempts to step into space will be a better understanding of our current planet and how to take care of it. — Chris Hadfield

Chaos that closely resembled panic awaited.

Shuttles raced to the presumed safety of the planet below while fighters crisscrossed the perimeter of the station. Platoon-sized formations of frigates and several cruisers formed up and accelerated away. To where the approaching attackers were located?

She didn't give a damn what her mother said in public. This was a bona fide insurrection. — G.S. Jennsen

The ride to orbit was impressive, as it always is. But once I got on board the space station, it really felt like I was visiting an old home; it felt very comfortable. — Scott Kelly

One of the things that makes it so challenging is that we're constructing the Station hundreds of miles above the surface of the Earth and we're doing it one piece at a time For the International Space Station we do not have the privilege of assuming the Space Station is on the ground before we take it up one piece at a time. So we have to be very clever about the testing that we do and the training that we do to make sure that each mission is successful, and that each piece and each mission goes just as it's planned. — Tamara E. Jernigan

I'm a fully trained cosmonaut and have completed 800 hours training, which has made me the No. 1 civilian reserve ready to visit the International Space Station. I am determined to go up, and I want to explore the Moon, Mars and beyond! — Brian Blessed

And then finally, I'm the commander, so I am fundamentally responsible for the lives of the other people on board and the health and longevity of the space station. I need to bring six people back happy, healthy and feeling like they've had the best six months of their life. — Chris Hadfield

Well, we have two major goals. The most important one is to get the station arm on board the station, because that's this really milestone in the space station building since from now on they will be using this arm to continue building the space station. — Umberto Guidoni

If you don't like airline food, you'll probably have the same impression of space station food. I would not fly to space for the food. — Chris Hadfield

For a million dollars, the Russians would take two people, a million apiece, around the moon and back. However, stories, videos that come from the space station, and other people, are a great inspiration to young people for an exciting career field. — Buzz Aldrin

The calluses on your feet in space will eventually fall off. So, the bottoms of your feet become very soft like newborn baby feet. But the top of my feet develop rough alligator skin because I use the top of my feet to get around here on space station when using foot rails. — Scott Kelly

I have always been a big advocate of tap water-not because I think it harmless but because the idea of purchasing water extracted from some remote watershed and then hauled halfway round the world bothers me. Drinking bottled water relieves people of their concern about ecological threats to the river they live by or to the basins of groundwater they live over. It's the same kind of thinking that leads some to the complacent conclusion that if things on earth get bad enough, well, we'll just blast off to a space station somewhere else. — Sandra Steingraber

I don't think people have an appreciation for the work that it takes to pull these missions off, like humans living on the space station continuously for 15 years. It is a huge army of hard-working people to make it happen. — Scott Kelly

For the last several years and culminating in six months in orbit next year, I've been training for my third space flight. This one is almost in a category completely different than the previous two, specifically to live in on the space station for six months, to command a space ship and to fly a new rocket ship. — Chris Hadfield

Something people don't recognize is that being on the space station is probably a lot like being in some kind of confinement - like isolation. — Scott Kelly

America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. We can reach for greatness again. We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful, economic, and scientific gain. Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station, and to do it within a decade. — Ronald Reagan

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

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

I feel privileged and honored to have flown. It's been a tremendous ride, looking back on the legacy and accomplishments, like the Hubble telescope and the launching of the International Space Station in 1998. — Alan G. Poindexter

When the International Space Station is finally launched, it will be fitted with special nickel-hydrogen batteries weighing a total of several tons, with a lifetime of just five years, requiring spares to be brought up from Earth at literally astronomical expense. — Charles Platt

Designing a station with artificial gravity would undoubtedly be a daunting task. Space agencies would have to re-examine many reliable technologies under the light of the new forces these tools would have to endure. Space flight would have to take several steps back before moving forward again. — Andy Weir

Neither a space station nor an enlightened mind can be realized in a day. — Dalai Lama XIV

If I want to walk out in the desert and heat up a can of beans on a fire, I still can. In those movies like Gattaca or whatever, the space age stuff is always all there is. But in the world there is never just one way of living. It's more like a big junkyard. Put it this way: I'm not afraid I'm going to end up on a space station in aluminium-foil underwear. — Tom Waits

We have a lot of systems here on board the space station, and we can't call a repair man when one of them breaks. — Scott Kelly

I think the people that want to fly in space, who want to work in space, who want to go to station, these people realize that there is a risk inherent to what they do. They understand that there are possible off-nominal situations, dangerous situations in space, and there's no insurance against that. — Roman Romanenko

There is a project that's underway called the interplanetary Internet. It's in operation between Earth and Mars. It's operating on the International Space Station. It's part of the spacecraft that's in orbit around the Sun that's rendezvoused with two planets. — Vint Cerf

In part, the deep-space mobile battle station was meant to put an end to harassments of any sort, whether driven by greed, political dissent, or revenge for acts committed during the Clone Wars or since. Once everyone in the galaxy grasped the weapon's capabilities, once the fear of Imperial reprisal took hold, discontent would cease to be a problem. — James Luceno

She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness. — Milan Kundera

Through these ongoing activities and possibly in the future, a Canadian will go live and work on the International Space Station and we will continue to make Canadians proud of our achievements in space. — Marc Garneau

The space station here is a magical place and an incredible science facility. — Scott Kelly

Creating lines that went straight into the interior [of a space station] was a recipe for disaster. Some knucklehead in an X-wing was bound to come along and drop an energy torpedo into your main power plant, and everyone knows how that ends. — John Ringo

Space flight participants, commonly known as space tourists, pay between $20 and $40 million each to leave Earth for 10 days or so and go to the International Space Station (ISS) via Soyuz, the compact Russian rocket that is now the only way for humans to get to the ISS. — Chris Hadfield

I think the crux of the matter was that if we were going to become partners in, for example, the International Space Station, we had to gain the respect of a country like the United States and particularly its space organization, NASA. — Marc Garneau

Despite being the only one of us who owned the game, I wasn't very good at Resurrection. As I watched them tramp through a ghoul-infested space station, Ben said, "Goblin, Radar, goblin."
I see him."
Come here you little bastard," Ben said, the controller twisting in his hand. "Daddy's gonna put you on a sailboat across the River Styx."
Did you just use Greek mythology to talk trash?" I asked.
Radar laughed. Ben started pummeling buttons, shouting, "Eat it, goblin! Eat it like Zeus ate Metis! — John Green

We used to have a crew of three on board the space station and even at one time a crew of two people, so it's something we can adjust to. — Scott Kelly

We should've asked China to be a portion of the space station. We should've worked out ways that we can ... just give away the technology that we have that puts things up into space, with cooperation up above the atmosphere that's needed to help each other. — Buzz Aldrin

Airline food is cooked in an oven and then kept warm. Space station food is often cooked in an oven and then thermo-stabilised, irradiated or dehydrated and then stored for a year or two before you even get to it. — Chris Hadfield

You should let dialogue get as nearly out of control as you can. Characters should say what they say to each other instead of what they mean to say. The worst purpose of dialogue is to elicit information: "You know why we're out on this space station, Carruthers - to save the universe!" — Robert Stone

When we're on the space station, we orbit the Earth 16 times per day, which means we're constantly moving to and away from the sun. From light to shadow, the temperature swings by 300 degrees. Of course we're protected by the gear we wear, but you can definitely feel this temperature change. — Thomas Marshburn

I want to make that a reality, ... The idea is to create office space in the unused portions of the station to be leased, hopefully by ING. That would provide a cash flow to Amtrak. — Thomas Carper

We should not have assumed that a political space station could be built. — Larry Niven

We also had to bring with us some desired scientific equipment over to the station as well as assemble new machines. For that, I had to conduct two space walks. — Philippe Perrin

If you take all the money we've spent at NASA since we landed on the moon and you had applied that money for incentives to the private sector, we would today probably have a permanent station on the moon, three or four permanent stations in space, a new generation of lift vehicles. — Newt Gingrich

Here they were, on the only planetary surface on which you could walk freely, naked to the wind and the sun, and when they had a choice, they sat in boxes and stared at littler boxes, just as if they had no choice-as if they were in a space station- — Kim Stanley Robinson

I think a good life-work balance is important, and that's even more important in some cases on the space station. — Scott Kelly

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

Out there on an endless number of worlds there must be other life, other people, creatures, types of life forms, all thinking they matter. But individually, they, including himself, those on the station, and those on Earth, amounted to so little. And yet that smallness mattered so much. A tiny blip of life on a dust fragment spinning through space had all the meaning in the universe. It — C.F. Barnes

When you talk to crews that went to Mir or have gone up to International Space Station, they say that you go through different phases of adaptation or getting used to the space environment. — Laurel Clark

Tinkering is something we need to know how to do in order to keep something like the space station running. I am a tinkerer by nature. — Leroy Chiao

Like the apple bruising Kafka's beetle, each of these pellets of recollection lodged in Moose's flesh, releasing its cargo of memories of all the things he had lost - "Not lost! Gained!" Moose thundered aloud, but now, mercifully, that debate (lost or gained?) was supplanted in his mind by the proximity of Belmont Harbor and the yacht club. Yes, this was the place; Moose eased the station wagon into a parking space, desperate to free himself of its chassis, whose sole purpose, it now seemed, was to hold him still so that these bullets of memory could assault him, enter his flesh and release their shrapnel of foolish and unreliable nostalgia. — Jennifer Egan

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

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

At middle age, I decide to give up on my dream of being an astronaut and follow my second, to be a writer. Also, I heard there was no smoking in the space station. — Michael Kroft

At this point I thought 'We made it,' by which I meant 'We survived.' I also was acutely aware that my childhood dream of flying into space had just come true. — Ron Garan

We have to be plumbers, electricians, construction engineers, or workers, on the space station, but at the same time running a laboratory, being scientists, being the best laboratory assistants we can be. It's all in a bundle; it's very exciting, it's a lot of fun. — Thomas Marshburn

only reason that the three of them were there, that Molly was there, instead of just him and his mom, was because of the space station. Jack wondered how many people could have been saved if they'd invested in a colony on the moon, or even Mars. Hell, even a proper orbital station would have been better than this. He — Anya Merchant

It is true that we Russians have sent only four doctors into space in forty years of flight, but still I might have had chance to fly to Mir or International Space Station except for one fact. This is that I cannot urinate - is this the right word, Mr. Roth? - I cannot urinate on wheel of bus. — Dan Simmons

It was time to get out of what Coach called "small-stack mentality." I no longer had to play like I was trying to escape the space station before it self-destructed, as the chirpy computer voice counted down. — Colson Whitehead

The same way people are now paying a couple thousand dollars to fly to other parts of the world, people will be paying $50,000 to spend a weekend on a space station. — Alan Shepard

While on the space station, I kept up with news a couple of ways - Mission Control sent daily summaries, and I would scan headlines on Google News when we had an Internet connection, which was about half the time. — Chris Hadfield

During that space walk there will be some repositioning of the power so that the arm can be fully controlled by the robotic station that is in the Lab. — Umberto Guidoni

At about 3:30 on May 9, 2013, then, I was puttering around when Pavel came over to say, "There is something interesting you might want to see. Little sparks and fireworks outside." Pavel's English isn't the greatest, so it took me a second to figure out what he was talking about. Then I got it: fireworks, Russia, Victory Day - made sense, though it was surprising that he could see them from space. I floated over to the Russian segment to look out the window: no, it wasn't happening on Earth - it looked like fireflies were coming off the left side of the Station. — Chris Hadfield

Our goal is to tell people about the International Space Station. I think very rarely people look up 250 miles and think, What are those guys working on, what are those men and women doing at this moment ... They're living and doing regular things, but also doing incredible work as well. We really want to bring that to people. — Soledad O'Brien

There is an empty space next to you in the backseat of the station wagon. Make it the shape of everything you need. Now say hello. — Richard Siken

I'm up for a massive, bombastic tour with hydraulics, robots, lasers, 15 costume changes, projecting on a power station, big impact, big visuals. I'd love to realize the theatricality of the whole thing. To be overwhelming, to surprise you, maybe to play in hidden spaces. — Anna Meredith

Once we had a rail station in Montgomery that connected to Columbus and went all the way up to Virginia, slave traders could transport thousands of slaves at a fraction of the cost than they could transport by boat, and certainly by foot. And that's how Montgomery became such an active slave-trading space. — Bryan Stevenson

It was some kind of cosmic switching device, routing the traffic of the stars through unimaginable dimensions of space and time. He was passing through a Grand Central Station of the galaxy. — Arthur C. Clarke

One of the core reasons for creating 'Station to Station' was to provide a space for exploration and cultural friction between different mediums. It should be natural for mediums like music, film and art to cross over, and we wanted to empower that process. — Doug Aitken

Danielle Lowen: How are you? I am fine. The group that destroyed Earth Station and made it look like the Colonial Union did it is now planning to nuke the surface of your planet until it glows, and frame the Conclave for it. Hope you are well. Looking forward to rescuing you in space again soon. Your friend, Harry Wilson. — John Scalzi

The beauty of the space station, and of human spaceflight, is that it is now at a level of maturity where you can invite people on-board, which is what I worked so hard to do on social media and all the videos I made. — Chris Hadfield

This space station [Yang Liwei] was little more than a giant Orbital Denial Station. If those charges were to detonate, the debris ... any future space launch would be grounded for years. It was a "Scorched Space" policy. "If we can't have it, neither can anyone else. — Max Brooks

Quinn keyed up a three-dimensional holovid schematic of Vega Station and its neighbors. The jump routes were represented by sparkling jagged lines between hazy spheres of local space systems. — Lois McMaster Bujold

To be able to rise from the earth; to be able, from a station in outer space, to see the relationship of the planet earth to other planets; to be able to contemplate the billions of factors in precise and beautiful combination that make human existence possible; to be able to dwell on an encounter of the human brain and spirit with the universe — Norman Cousins

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

First there was Genesis I, then Genesis II, and, if all goes well, there will be a Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) attached to the International Space Station (ISS) by 2015. — Erik Seedhouse

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

Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen. — Larry Niven

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

NASA will send up a big sun shade that will be in orbit between the earth and sun and deflect 2 or 3 percent of the sunshine back into space. It would be cheaper than the international space station. — James Lovelock

President Bush wants to build a space station on the moon. And from the moon, he wants to launch people to Mars. You know what this means. He's been drinking again. — David Letterman

Using material ferried up by rockets, it would be possible to construct a "space station" in ... orbit. The station could be provided with living quarters, laboratories and everything needed for the comfort of its crew, who would be relieved and provisioned by a regular rocket service. (1945) — Arthur C. Clarke

Very little useful science got done in the space station. NASA never did the experiments needed to develop the technologies required for a genuine interplanetary expedition: centrifugal gravity to avoid bodily harm and a truly closed biosphere. — Gregory Benford

It's important to bring things back from the Space Station because, unlike somebody living at the house where the garbage truck comes by twice a week, they don't have that in space. — Mark Kelly

What we get from building a space station, the economic return, the science return, is very, very important to our nation, to our economy. — Scott Kelly

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

The Earth is a beautiful planet. The space station is a great vantage point to observe it and share our planet in pictures. It makes you more of an environmentalist. — Scott Kelly

This was never about welfare. You can have almost any opinion about welfare, you can be bitterly opposed to its very existence, and you could and perhaps should still find what goes on with welfare fraud prosecution in America crazy, even shocking.

Because the issue here isn't the efficacy of the welfare state. This is about fairness. Do we treat people the same way everywhere? How does a poor person end up getting arrested for fraud, and does the state have the same playbook for rich people?

The obvious answer is no, but you have to see the difference up close, at a day-to-day level, to really grasp the breadth of the gap. When you see, up close, where the awesome power of the American criminal justice space station is directed, you will begin scratching your head, no matter what you think of people on welfare. — Matt Taibbi

Hermione looked at him, not blinking. It was a moment before she replied, "I know that you served your time on Azkaban Station." She looked out the porthole into the inky blackness of space, twirling her fork between her fingers. "Everyone here is hoping for a clean slate when they reach Alpha Centauri, but that will only happen if we all agree to forget and forgive the past. As far as I'm concerned, you've earned your redemption. — Refictionista

Alex peered behind her to see Noah fussing over a scrape on Kennedy's cheek. "Unless someone's bleeding to death, first aid will have to wait. You'll want to strap into the jump seats.

"This could get interesting, and that's before we get clear of the station. — G.S. Jennsen

Looking out on the second day of our mission, I became aware that in the far distance, there was a distinctive-looking star. It stood out because, while all the other stars stayed exactly the same size and shape, this one got bigger and bigger as we got closer to it. At some point it stopped being a point of light and started becoming something three-dimensional, morphing into a strange bug-like thing with all kinds of appendages. And then, isolated against this inky background, it started to look like a small town.
Which is in fact what it is: an outpost that humans have built, far from Earth. The International Space Station. It's every science fiction book come true, every little kid's dream realized: a large, capable, fully human creation orbiting up in the universe.
And it felt miraculous that soon we'd be docked there, and the next phase of our expedition would begin. — Chris Hadfield

Leaving the space station was bittersweet - I had been there for a long time and looked forward to leaving, but it is a remarkable place. — Scott Kelly

A space station is a rangy monstrosity, a giant erector set built by a madman. — Mary Roach

People aren't stupid. They saw what was happening at the Cologne central station. A lawless space was created in the middle of a city of over a million. That has to be addressed and it has to be done so in a sober-minded way. — Alice Schwarzer

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

There are many places that are not made for staying," Heckleck said. "They are too harsh, too hard, and too far away from whatever you call home. You don't root where you don't have to, unless you're unluck. — Cecil Castellucci

The ISS moves so quickly that if you fired a rifle bullet from one end of a football field,7 the International Space Station could cross the length of the field before the bullet traveled 10 yards.8 — Randall Munroe

On the far side of the bay was the command station that controlled the door, which was currently semi-open. Rather than the normal closed maw of steel, there was a network of pulsing gold veins crisscrossing the gaping mouth of black - a nitrogen membrane keeping the molecular air contained and pressurized while allowing aircraft to pass through. — April Adams