SPACE TRAVEL QUOTES II
quotations about space travel and exploration
My descendants are going to surf light-waves in space.
KATHERINE MACLEAN
"The Missing Man"
Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.
CARL SAGAN
Cosmos
We shape life, we travel space
But we don't know the words to the songs of the ocean
STAR ONE
"Songs of the Ocean"
Space travel is like hanging upside down for a long time!
BRINDA K. RANA
"Astronaut twins study shows space travel causes premature aging", La Jolla Light, August 1, 2017
Our flight must be not only to the stars but into the nature of our own beings. Because it is not merely where we go, to Alpha Centauri or Betelgeuse, but what we are as we make our pilgrimage there. Our natures will be going there, too.
PHILIP K. DICK
"The Android and the Human"
The spice is vital to space travel.
Travel without moving.
ASTRAL PROJECTION
"Dancing Galaxy"
So why spend money on space, which is and always had been a non-economic endeavor? In part, because we are still coasting on the achievements of the giants who came before us. We have let them down, let ourselves down, and become a country where dreams and aspirations are shrinking. We create magical devices--manufactured elsewhere--that sit in our palms and can tell us there is good pizza around the corner, but we can't get our hands around a version of our future that unpacks the mysteries of the great beyond. America is no long that kind of place, that kind of country, that kind of ideal.
DAVID CARR
"American Greatness 2.0: A week in which private space efforts explode etched the sad reality that the U.S. no longer reaches for the stars", Medium, November 1, 2014
Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said "Because it is there." Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
speech at Rice University, September 12, 1962
The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
2001: A Space Odyssey
And everything soon must change. Men would set their watches by other suns than this.
SAUL BELLOW
Mr. Sammler's Planet
I'm coming back in ... and it's the saddest moment of my life.
ED WHITE
at the conclusion of the first American spacewalk during the Gemini 4 mission, June 3, 1965
To venture into space we must be strong-willed and determined. We must be fully committed to its exploration and discovery; space permits no half measures and is unforgiving of mistakes.
HENRY JOY MCCRACKEN
LM, November 1997
Human DNA spreading out from gravity's steep well like an oilslick.
WILLIAM GIBSON
Neuromancer
As long as we are a single-planet species, we are vulnerable to extinction by a planetwide catastrophe, natural or self-induced. Once we become a multiplanet species, our chances to live long and prosper will take a huge leap skyward.
DAVID GRINSPOON
Slate, January 7, 2004
Space can be mapped and crossed and occupied without definable limit; but it can never be conquered. When our race has reached its ultimate achievements, and the stars themselves are scattered no more widely than the seed of Adam, even then we shall still be like ants crawling on the face of the Earth. The ants have covered the world, but have they conquered it -- for what do their countless colonies know of it, or of each other?
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
"We'll Never Conquer Space"
Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Ground Control to Major Tom (ten, nine, eight, seven, six)
Commencing countdown, engines on (five, four, three)
Check ignition and may God's love be with you (two, one, liftoff)
DAVID BOWIE
"Space Oddity"
And now 'tis man who dares assault the sky...
And as we come to claim our promised place,
Aim only to repay the good you gave,
And warm with human love the chill of space.
THOMAS G. BERGIN
"Space Prober"
NASA's next urgent mission should be to send good poets into space so they can describe what it's really like.
SHANNON HALE
Dangerous
I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.
EDWARD ABBEY
"The First Morning", Desert Solitaire
Human exploration and colonization of Mars will keep us busy for hundreds, even thousands, of years. During that time, there will be advances in nanotechnology, space sailing, robotics, biomolecular engineering, and artificial intelligence. These advances are occurring even now, affecting our outlook about what it means to be human and engage in human activity. Those technologies will not merely allow us to stay home on Earth and Mars, but our minds will extend our presence throughout the universe so that we will not need or want to extend our bodies there -- even if we could, which I think is doubtful.
LOUIS FRIEDMAN
"Beyond Mars: The Distant Future of Space Exploration", Discover Magazine, December 3, 2015