Quotes & Sayings About Space Travel

We should explore new ways to drive down the cost of space travel. instead of costly booster rockets, maybe we should think of laser/microwave driven rockets, or space elevators. Until then, the cost of space exploration will limit our ability to explore the universe. — Michio Kaku

Sam rocked backwards and felt all the breath leave his body. Sam felt all his breath leave the room, the apartment, the building. the city. Sam felt all his breath leave the world, the night, and travel up to the stars where it turned to ice and stretched atom-thin into every corner of the galaxy. Then it retracted, gathering up all the black world, and wound its way back through interstellar space and dark matter and the secrets of infinity, back into the earth's orbit, back into his night in his city, back into his very lungs. It was okay. He was just trying to help, to ease woes and mend hearts and cool seared souls, to guide the bereaved out of the land of the lost, to make the mourning a little less lonesome. He was forgiven. — Laurie Frankel

Riley asked himself why he had ever considered space travel romantic. "Because you are a romantic," his pedia said. — James Edwin Gunn

It is for this
reason that we find that co-existence, which could neither be in
time alone, for time has no contiguity, nor in space alone, for
space has no before, after, or now, — Arthur Schopenhauer

Just because your electronics are better than ours, you aren't necessarily superior in any way. Look, imagine that you humans are a man in LA with a brand-new Trujillo and we are a nuhp in New York with a beat-up old Ford. The two fellows start driving toward St. Louis. Now, the guy in the Trujillo is doing 120 on the interstates, and the guy in the Ford is putting along at 55; but the human in the Trujillo stops in Vegas and puts all of his gas money down the hole of a blackjack table, and the determined little nuhp cruises along for days until at last he reaches his goal. It's all a matter of superior intellect and the will to succeed.
Your people talk a lot about going to the stars, but you just keep putting your money into other projects, like war and popular music and international athletic events and resurrecting the fashions of previous decades. If you wanted to go into space, you would have. — George Alec Effinger

War created the conditions for great advances in technology...without war men would not traverse oceans in hours, travel in space, or microwave popcorn. — Adrian R. Lewis

The immediate thing that strikes you when you see the inside of the hand is its compactness. The ball of your thumb, the thenar eminence, contains four different muscles. Twiddle your thumb and tilt your hand: ten different muscles and at least six different bones work in unison. Inside the wrist are at least eight small bones bones that move against one another. Bend your wrist, and you are using a number of muscles that begin in your forearm, extending into tendons as they travel down your arm to end at your hand. Even the simplest motion involves a complex interplay among many parts packed in a small space. — Neil Shubin

Travel is the realm of the impossible adventures, the quick fix, the ship passing in the night. It entitles you to meet interesting people, whom you would never meet, even if you laid traps or advertised for them. Not only do you met them, but you also unmeet them, all in the space of, it often seems, a mere compacted evening. As there is so little time, bodies in motion drop their guard and immediately get on with their stories. Then the proverbial ships part, each to its destination, never again to brush each other's wake. — Lawrence Millman

If they can work out the kinks, it could revolutionize space travel." " 'Work out the kinks'?" Jared said. "I'm about to use this thing. Kinks are bad. — John Scalzi

But define 'completely ridiculous shit,'" Duvall said. "Does space travel count? Contact with alien races? Does quantum physics count? Because I don't understand that crap at all. As far as I'm concerned, quantum physics could have been written by a hack. — John Scalzi

We've gotta reinvest in space travel. We should've never left the moon. — Ray Bradbury

Laurence kept sneaking looks under the table at his propped-open copy of Have Space Suit - Will Travel. He was already halfway through the book. — Charlie Jane Anders

From space travel to organ transplants, one of the most important influences shaping the modern world is science. Amazingly, people who lived during the Civil War had more in common with Abraham than with us. If Christians are going to speak to that world and interact with it responsibly, they must interact with science. — J.P. Moreland

On the contrary, a trust in the staying power and travel-worthiness of such good should encourage us to credit the possibility of a world where respect for the validity of every tradition
will issue in the creation and maintenance of a salubrious political space. — Seamus Heaney

I'm a nine-year old kid inside and my passion has been all my life to want to travel into space. — Peter Diamandis

THE DAUGHTER: You named the earth - is that the ponderous world
And dark, that from the moon must take its light?
THE VOICE: It is the heaviest and densest sphere.
Of all that travel through the space.
THE DAUGHTER: And is it never brightened by the sun?
THE VOICE: Of course, the sun does reach it - now and then - — August Strindberg

The most precious substance in the universe is the spice Melange ... The spice extends life ... expands consciousness ... gives them the ability to fold space ... that is, travel to any part of the universe without moving. — Frank Herbert

I define science fiction as fiction in which things happen that are not possible today - that depend, for instance, on advanced space travel, time travel, the discovery of green monsters on other planets or galaxies, or that contain various technologies we have not yet developed. — Margaret Atwood

Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that. — Margaret Atwood

The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must-never for sport. — Robert A. Heinlein

Every place of arrival should have a booth set up and manned by an ordinary person whose task it is to greet strangers and give them a little trophy of local space-time stuff - tell them of his difficulties in high school and put a pinch of soil in their pockets - in order to insure that the stranger shall not become an Anyone. — Walker Percy

On a harsh expedition, there's no space for anyone who does not intend to finish. — Tahir Shah

Human uploads have such a natural advantage over present-day people in the environment of space, it's exceedingly unlikely flesh-and-blood beings will ever engage in interstellar travel. — Frank Tipler

Long-term, I see robotics prevailing on the moon ... The most important decision we'll have to make about space travel is whether to commit to a permanent human presence on Mars. Without it, we'll never be a true space-faring people. — Buzz Aldrin

It was cold. Space, the air we breathed, the yellow rocks, were deadly cold. There was something ultimate, passionless, and eternal in this cold. It came to us as a single constant note from the depths of space. We stood on the very boundary of life and death. — Frank Smythe

A journey is a gesture inscribed in space, it vanishes even as it's made. You go from one place to another place, and on to somewhere else again, and already behind you there is no trace that you were ever there. — Damon Galgut

Our television signals leave this planet and go out into space ... the signals spread out from the earth in spherical waves, a little like ripples in a pond. They travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second, and essentially go on forever. The better some other civilizations receivers are, the farther away they could be and still pick up our tv signals. Even we could detect a strong tv transmission from a planet going around the nearest star.' President: 'You mean everything? You mean to say all that crap on television - the car crashes, wrestling, the porno channels, the evening news? — Carl Sagan

It is delightful to read on the spot the impressions and opinions of tourists who visited a hundred years ago, in the vehicles and with the aesthetic prejudices of the period, the places which you are visiting now. The voyage ceases to be a mere tour through space; you travel through time and thought as well. — Aldous Huxley

In the Vortex that lies beyond time and space tumbled a police box that was not a police box. — Stephen Baxter

Allow intelligent design into science textbooks, lecture halls, and laboratories, and the cost to the frontier of scientific discovery - the frontier that drives the economies of the future - would be incalculable. I don't want students who could make the next major breakthrough in renewable energy sources or space travel to have been taught that anything they don't understand, and that nobody yet understands, is divinely constructed and therefore beyond their intellectual capacity. The day that happens, Americans will just sit in awe of what we don't understand, while we watch the rest of the world boldly go where no mortal has gone before. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

There is a vast world for us, a boundless space beyond and between the fences and the rules. We will travel it freely. We will be okay. — Lauren Oliver

As is often the case when I travel, my vulnerability
like not knowing what the hell I'm going to do upon arrival
makes me more open to outside interactions than I might be when I'm at home and think I know best what needs to be done. On the road, serendipity is given space to enter my life. — Andrew McCarthy

Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out. — Stephen Hawking

Rocket scientists agree that we have about reached the limit of our ability to travel in space using chemical rockets. To achieve anything near the speed of light we will need a new energy source and a new propellant. Nuclear fission is not an option. — Wilson Greatbatch

Drifting across the vast space, silent except for wind and footsteps, I felt uncluttered and unhurried for the first time in a while, already on desert time. — Rebecca Solnit

Sometime we don't always get what we want!" shouted Evie, not knowing herself. "That's life!" ... The Captain, still looking at her, raised his eyebrows in surprise. He was proud of her for being brave enough to shout at (the villain), but he said softly to her, "Usually men with knives at your friend's neck get what they want, Evelyn. — Elizabeth Newton

Here is my objection to submarines and space travel: not enough windows. What difference does it make if you're in outer space or underwater, or wherever, if you can't feel, or hear, or see or smell it? — Karen Joy Fowler

Prose fills a space, like a liquid poured in from the top, but poetry occupies it, arrays itself in formation, sets up camp and refuses to budge. — Simon Armitage

People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two loves, but this, too, was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel
before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed-sheets. After a few years, Levi arrived; space was made for him; it was as if he had always been. Looking at them both now, Jerome found himself in their finger joints and neat conch ears, in their long legs and wild curls. He heard himself in their partial lisps caused by puffy tongues vibrating against slightly noticeable buckteeth. He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away. — Zadie Smith

Look how far the human race has come in terms of air and space travel in the last hundred years. So in the next couple of thousand years, you've got to believe that we're going to be able to do all kinds of amazing things. — Chris Squire

She skidded around a corner, slamming her shoulder into the wall and bouncing off of it without slowing.

Caleb?

Silence. Forty-six meters. A long stretch of hallway. She pushed faster, harder. Twenty meters.

She burst into the room in unison with a deafening crash of metal shearing metal. — G.S. Jennsen

Travel does this: it creates space that allows thoughts and memories to intrude and assert themselves with impunity. Smells and sights, the quality of light, the honk of a horn
can all act as touchstones when least expected. — Andrew McCarthy

Space: the gaping hole between land and other land. — SE Zbasnik

The future. Space travel, or cosmology. Alternate universes. Time travel. Robots. Marvelous inventions. Immortality. Catastrophes. Aliens. Superman. Other dimensions. Inner space, or the psyche. These are the ideas that are essential to science fiction. The phenomena change, the basic ideas do not. These ideas are the same philosophical concepts that have intrigued mankind throughout history. — Kate Wilhelm

Because both quantum theory and Einstein's theory of gravity are united in ten-dimensional space, we expect that the question of time travel will be settled decisively by the hyperspace theory. As in the case of wormholes and dimensional windows, the final chapter will be written when we incorporate the full power of the hyperspace theory. — Michio Kaku

Isn't antimatter what fuels the U.S.S.
Enterprise? — Dan Brown

The dawn of space travel is the dawn of woman. — Samuel R. Delany

Have intention, sacred will travel. — S. Kelley Harrell

He also said - pointedly - that space travel nowadays was an escape from the problems of Earth. That is, one took off for the stars in the hope that the worst would happen and be done with in one's absence. And indeed I couldn't deny that more than once I had peered anxiously out the porthole - especially when returning from a long voyage - to see whether or not our planet resembled a burnt potato. — Stanislaw Lem

At the moment I'm doing this space movie, so I'm obsessed with physics and space travel. I know three months down the line it's gone. Then I'll be able to superficially say stuff about space. — Cillian Murphy

Twisting space-time into knots requires energy on a scale that will not be available within the next several centuries or even millenia-if ever. Even if all the nations of the world were to band together to build a machine that could probe hyperspace, they would ultimately fail. And, as Guth points out, the temperatures necessary to create a baby universe in the laboratory is 1,000 trillion trillion degrees, far in excess of anything available to us. In fact, that temperature is much greater than anything found in the interior of a star. So, although it is possible that Einstein's laws and the laws of quantum theory might allow for time travel, this is not within the capabilities of earthlings like us, who can barely escape the feeble gravitational field of our own planet. While we can marvel at the implications of wormhole research, realizing its potential is strictly reserved for advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. — Michio Kaku

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
[Address at Rice University, September 12 1962] — John F. Kennedy

That is the magic of travel. You leave your home secure in your own knowledge and identity. But as you travel, the world in all it's richness intervenes. You meet people you could not invent; you see scenes you could not imagine. Your own world, which was so large as to consume your whole life, becomes smaller and smaller until it is only one tiny dot in time and space. You return a different person. — Kent Nerburn

Yet this distance, all those abysses unbridged and then unbridgeable by radio, television, cheap travel and the rest, was not wholly bad. People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free of each other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more. But I am a heretic, I think our ancestors' isolation was like the greater space they enjoyed: it can only be envied. The world is only too literally too much with us now. — John Fowles

God. But we are hardly lost in the universe. To the contrary, the reality of grace indicates humanity to be at the center of the universe. This time and space exists for us to travel through. When my patients lose sight of their significance and are disheartened by the effort of the work we are doing, I sometimes tell them that the human race is in the midst of making an evolutionary leap. "Whether or not we succeed in that leap," I say to them, "is your personal responsibility." And mine. The universe, this stepping-stone, has been laid down to prepare a way for us. But we ourselves must step across it, one by one. Through — M. Scott Peck

When the history books are written in a thousand years, when space travel would have become routine, the moment that humans first left Earth will be of huge importance. Star City is a central part of this story and it deserves more recognition. — Helen Sharman

Sounds travel through space long after their wave patterns have ceased to be detectable by the human ear: some cut right through the ionosphere and barrel on out into the cosmic heartland, while others bounce around, eventually being absorbed into the vibratory fields of earthly barriers, but in neither case does the energy succumb; it goes on forever - which is why we, each of us, should take pains to make sweet notes. — Tom Robbins

Too many of us have lost the passion and emotion of the remarkable things we-ve done in space. Let us not tear up the future, but rather again heed the creative metaphors that render space travel a religious experience. When the blast of a rocket launch slams you against the wall and all the rust is shaken off your body, you will hear the great shout of the universe and the joyful crying of people who have been changed by what they-ve seen. — Ray Bradbury

All his senses screamed in warning, the very air reeking of forbidden magic, but duty call him forward. — Karen Azinger

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
Whispering I love you, before long I die,
I have travel'd a long way merely to look on you to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look'd on you,
For I fear'd I might afterward lose you.
Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much separated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever;
Be not impatient--a little space--know you I salute the air, the
ocean and the land,
Every day at sundown for your dear sake my love. — Walt Whitman

On this planet are every kind of deadly animal from across the stars. The only people that come here are hunters looking for the most dangerous of trophies. No rescue. You either get your prize or you die. — RoChe Montoya

Crushed sandstone sifted through Caleb's fingers, insubstantial as dust. A breeze caught the debris mid-fall and spirited it away before it could join the ashes blanketing the ground.

He stopped in the middle of what had once been a street, his arms pulled in at his sides, his fists balled in barely restrained fury. — G.S. Jennsen

I thought any chance I had of space travel would be military or government-controlled. — David Mackay

When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere. — Robert A. Heinlein

The acrid odor of overloaded circuitry permeated the air, the horrid smell witness that at least one of his senses was working as sights and sounds became one with the unknown. Eventually he collapsed to the floor, wondering if he'd wake up in mortality. Then the muddled spectra went black, the silence that followed only possible in the deepest sectors of space. Or death. — Marcha A. Fox

Mars looks like Vegas without the casinos. — Sam Neill

In order to be a better writer, one must always write. — Safa Shaqsy

I feel so sorry for anyone who misses the experience of history, the horizons of history. We think little of those who, given the chance to travel, go nowhere. We deprecate provincialism. But it is possible to be as provincial in time as it is in space. Because you were born into this particular era doesn't mean it has to be the limit of your experience. Move about in time, go places. Why restrict your circle of acquaintances to only those who occupy the same stage we call the present? — David McCullough

I loved you backward and forward in time. I loved you beyond boundaries of time and space. — Dan Simmons

I'd like to get shot into space. I'd like to potentially visit the moon. I don't know if I can do that in the next couple years, but I spent some time at the jet propulsion lab, looking out at the future of when a guy like me can do a little space travel. — Rob Dyrdek

Not so many years ago there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel -movement through space -provided the universal metaphor for change. One of the subtle confusions -perhaps one of the secret terrors -of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did. — Daniel J. Boorstin

But remember, my reader, whom I hope to have travel far with me through time and space remember, please, my reader, that I have thought much on these matters that through bloody nights and sweats of dark that lasted years long I have been alone with my many selves to consult and contemplate my many selves. — Jack London

When ships to sail the void between the stars have been built, there will step forth men to sail these ships. — Johannes Kepler

Come here, cat. You wouldn't want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow. — Connie Willis

Only a large-volume market like space travel can attack the barrier of high costs. — Buzz Aldrin

I believe that space travel will one day become as common as airline travel is today. I'm convinced, however, that the true future of space travel does not lie with government agencies
NASA is still obsessed with the idea that the primary purpose of the space program is science
but real progress will come from private companies competing to provide the ultimate adventure ride, and NASA will receive the trickle-down benefits. — Buzz Aldrin

Despite my vast interest in other universes and new ideas and space, travel and time travel, which by the way I think is impossible, the basic thing is human character, which is the main thing of most writers. — Philip Jose Farmer

In space there are no seasons, and this is as true of the ships that cross the distances between humanity's far-flung homes. But we measure our seasons anyway: by a smile, a silence, a song. — Yoon Ha Lee

Only since the collapse of the Soviet Union have we learned that the Soviets were in fact developing a moon rocket, known as the N1, in the sixties. All four launch attempts of the N1 ended in explosions. Saturn was the largest rocket in the world, the most complex and powerful ever to fly, and remains so to this day. The fact that it was developed for a peaceful purpose is an exception to every pattern of history, and this is one of the legacies of Apollo. — Margaret Lazarus Dean

In the early days of space travel, one interesting problem emerged from experiments with weightlessness. Americans found that ... normal ink pen would not work without gravity feed. Scientists undertook extensive research, finally developed high-technology pen to work in conditions of no gravity. In Russia, scientist faced with the same problem found a different solution. Instead of pen, they used pencil. — Marina Lewycka

For decades, people have known the chemical-propulsion approach to space travel is really not going to get us that far. Chemical propulsion is essentially like the horse-and-cart approach to the exploration of the American West, instead of the steamboat or the railroad. — Franklin Chang Diaz

The smell of books soothed his soul like nothing else could. The store was his haven, his refuge, and most importantly, it was safe. Here he could go anywhere in the world, explore the seas, scale mountains, travel through time and space or fall in love. — Sheri Lyn

Aviation - and space travel, in particular - have always been especially captivating. — Felix Baumgartner

Across galaxies of time and space
Travelling just to see your face
Lost amidst the countless stars
To bring me back to where you are. — Bryce Anderson

I'm obsessed with the moon and space travel, so if I could incorporate that, I'd love to go to space. — Sam Heughan

We are very used to imagining that we see a three-dimensional world when we look around ourselves. But is this really true? If we keep in mind that what we see is the result of photons impinging on our eyes, it is possible to imagine our view of the world in quite a different way. Look around and imagine that you see each object as a consequence of photons having just travelled from it to you. Each object you see is the result of a process by which information travelled to you in the shape of a collection of photons. The farther away the object is, the longer it took the photons to travel to you. So when you look around you do not see space-instead, you are looking back through the history of the universe. What you are seeing is a slice through the history of the world. Everything you see is a bit of information brought to you by a process which is a small part of that history. — Lee Smolin

Those are the kinds of roles you can really sink your teeth into. Characters with an edge. When you're playing someone who's sort of seedy, there's less limitation, there's so much space you can travel. There's room to move in. — Matt Dillon

There is no need to travel a great distance to touch the Kingdom of God, because it is not located in space or time. — Thich Nhat Hanh

When historians look back on our century, they may remember it most, not for space travel or the release of nuclear energy, but as the time when the peoples of the world first came to take one another seriously. — Huston Smith

I hope there will be continued U.K. investment in human spaceflight to enable Britain to benefit from space travel in the longer term and that many more Britons - women and men - will travel into space. — Helen Sharman

She and Kennedy both dove for the power connector; Kennedy reached it first and yanked out the connection as Alex landed on her stomach beside it.

The air settled down until the fine hairs on her arm no longer stood on end. Alex dropped her forehead to the platform and started laughing. "Just like university, isn't it?"

"Almost - nothing's actually blown up yet. — G.S. Jennsen

We would spend hours playing pretend games about missions to deep space, or landing on Pluto. That became our favorite planet to travel to. Pluto was our Tatooine. We — R.J. Palacio

THERE IT IS,' my mother says, and what she means is that the dot we've been nearing for weeks, the one that's been growing into a larger dot with two smaller dots circling it, has now become even larger than that, growing from a dot to a disc, shining back the light from its sun, until you can see the blue of its oceans, the green of its forests, the white of its polar caps, a circle of colour against the black beyond. — Patrick Ness

[A]dventures befall the unadventurous as readily, if not as frequently, as the bold. Adventures are a logical and reliable result - and have been since at least the time of Odysseus - of the fatal act of leaving one's home, or trying to return to it again. All adventures happen in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one's home. As soon as you have crossed your doorstep or the county line, into that place where the structures, laws, and conventions of your upbringing no longer apply, where the support and approval (but also the disapproval and repression) of your family and neighbors are not to be had: then you have entered into adventure, a place of sorrow, marvels, and regret. — Michael Chabon

If you travel in space for three years and come back, four hundred years will have passed on Earth. I am only an armchair astronomer, but I have the odd sense that I have returned from a journey to a world where nothing quite makes sense. — Jodi Picoult

Travel now by all means - if you have the time. But travel the right way, the way I travel. I am always reading and thinking of the history and geography of a place. I see its people in terms of these, placed in the social framework of time and space. — Oliver Sacks

An optimist and a gentleman, I like that in my men. — Karen Azinger

Normal people have rock collections, shell collections, key ring collections and stamp collections. (The Captain had even known somebody with a letterbox collection.) But a people collection? That had to be the most bizarre one he'd come across. Not to mention the most unethical. — Elizabeth Newton

I think that somebody with the resources and innovation and the idea is going to come out of nowhere and come up with a successful space travel program. — Kevin J. Anderson

Consider: The human genome consists of about 3.3 billion base pairs. Since there are only four types of pair, that amounts to 0.8 gigabytes of information, or about what you can fit on a CD. With a microwave radio transmitter, you could beam that amount of information into space in a few minutes, and have it travel to anyone at light speed. — Seth Shostak