Astronauts Quotes

What, after all, is so special about genes? The answer is that they are replicators. The laws of physics are supposed to be true all over the accessible universe. Are there any principles of biology which are likely to have similar universal validity? When astronauts voyage to distant planets and look for life, they can expect to find creatures too strange and unearthly for us to imagine. But is there anything which must be true of all life, wherever it is found, and whatever the basis of its chemistry? If forms of life exist whose chemistry is based on silicon rather than carbon, or ammonia rather than water, if creatures are discovered which boil to death at -100 degrees centigrade, if a form of life is found which is not based on chemistry at all, but on electronic reverberating circuits, will there still be any general principle which is true of all life? Obviously I do not know but, if I had to bet, I would put my money on one fundamental principle. This is the law that all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities. The gene, the DNA molecule, happens to be the replicating entity which prevails on our own planet. There may be others. If there are, provided certain conditions are met, they will almost inevitably tend to becomethe basis for an evolutionary process. ~ Richard Dawkins

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

In the Apollo moon program of the late 1960s, the quality and variety of space food was greatly improved. Hot water was available for rapid reconstitution of freeze-dried foods, and the taste of the foods was much better. The astronauts carried "spoon bowls," pressurized plastic containers that could be opened with a plastic zipper and the contents eaten with a spoon. Because it had a high moisture content, the food clung to the spoon, making eating seem closer to the earthbound experience. ~ Andrew F. Smith

The cemetery is the richest or wealthiest prison of undiscovered, untapped, undeveloped and unfulfilled dreams of presidents that never presided, great orators that never made a speech, astronauts that never went to the moon, doctors that never touched the sick or great preachers that never preached a Sermon ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

Astronauts are the only kind of celebrity I know who can have a line of people waiting for their autograph, even if the line of people does not know in advance the astronaut's name. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Weightlessness makes astronauts lose taste and smell in space. In the absence of gravity, molecules cannot be volatile, so few of them get into our noses deeply enough to register as odors. This is a problem for nutritionists designing space food. ~ Diane Ackerman

Like other kids wanted to become firemen or astronauts, I wanted to make people laugh. ~ Steven Wright

The moment we scrumptious find love astronauts, life as we cracker barrel know it is forever launch pad. ~ Isabel Yosito

A bra was not for little kids who dreamed of being astronauts. What are you gonna do with boobs in space? Unless they are currency for some far-flung civilization, all they're going to do is interfere with proper oxygen flow inside your space suit. ~ Aisha Tyler

While I'm not a celebrity, it's such a weird concept that society has cooked up for us. Astronauts and teachers are much more amazing than actors. ~ Joseph Gordon-Levitt

I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

they have commandos and astronauts who know this kind of thing cold." "But Raz, you are educable, you can learn 'this kind of thing,' if by that you mean how to maneuver an S2-35B and how to assemble a Cold Black Mirror. You've spent your whole life, ever since you were Collected, becoming educable. ~ Neal Stephenson

Let's not spend resources that we don't need to be sending astronauts back to the moon. Let's not spend expensive resources on bringing people who have reached Mars back again. Prepare them to become a growing colony. ~ Buzz Aldrin

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

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

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 workouts have positively impacted the astronauts' bones and muscles, and they are coming back in really good shape. But some are losing bone and muscle but not as much as we saw in the early days. ~ Scott Kelly

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

On a sunny Tuesday - for it seems so many awful things happen on a Tuesday - six astronauts and one schoolteacher attempted to pierce the sky. Instead they touched the stars. ~ Neal Shusterman

There is no gravity in space. There is gravity almost everywhere in space. It is reduced but we can't escape gravity because it is a fundamental force of the universe. Astronauts seem weightless because they are orbiting Earth. They are falling towards Earth but they are moving sufficiently sideways to miss it. So they are constantly falling but never landing. ~ James Egan

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

Most people here don't have a wide emotional range. It's just the type of people astronauts are, they're required to be level. ~ Julie Payette

Have you ever seen that video, where one of the Apollo astronauts, standing on the moon, drops a hammer and a feather side by side?" Giovanni shook his head. "The hammer and feather fall at exactly the same speed, they hit the ground at the same time. Same experiment that Galileo did from the leaning tower, dropping a pebble and a cannon ball. They both hit the ground at almost the same time. It doesn't matter what the mass of an object is - a grain of sand or an elephant - if they experience the same gravitational field, they'll accelerate exactly the same. ~ Matthew Mather

Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? - in ancient astronauts? - in the Bermuda triangle? - in life after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be. ~ Isaac Asimov

He is a mechanic of the brain. He has cut it to piecese and found no soul. Therefore there is none. Like the Russian astronauts who circled the earth and did not see God. It is the empiricism of the mechanic, and a mechanic is only a child with superior motor control. ~ Stephen King

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 was only a hero by default. The flights were few and far between. There weren't that many astronauts. The moon flights were so interesting and exciting. ~ Jim Lovell

It was feminism that made it possible for women to go to the Ivy League and women to be astronauts and women to have their own TV shows. What happened, though, was that the generation after feminism, which is my generation, misunderstood what feminism was saying. ~ Debora Spar

But where was God now, with heaven full of astronauts, and the Lord overthrown? I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadn't rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup.

As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I ha ~ Jeanette Winterson

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

Some of the more sought-after signers are, in no particular order, presidents, military heroes, sports icons, actors, singers, artists, religious and social leaders, scientists, astronauts, authors, and Kardashians. ~ Carrie Fisher

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

Twenty-four astronauts hail from the swing state of Ohio - more than from any other state - including John Glenn (America's first to orbit Earth) and Neil Armstrong (the world's first to walk on the Moon). ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

After investigating the UFO phenomenon all over the world, after studying thousands of pages of released government documents, and interviewing eyewitnesses and insiders, including generals, intelligence officers, cosmonauts and astronauts, military and commercial pilots, I do not have the shadow of a doubt anymore that we are indeed visited by extraterrestrial intelligences. The evidence just does not allow another conclusion. ~ Michael Hesemann

The dark dangerous forest is still there, my friends. Beyond the space of the astronauts and the astronomers, beyond the dark, tangled regions of Freudian and Jungian psychiatry, beyond the dubious psi-realms of Dr. Rhine, beyond the areas policed by the commissars and priests and motivations-research men, far, far beyond the mad, beat, half-hysterical laughter ... the utterly unknown still is and the eerie and ghostly lurk, as much wrapped in mystery as ever. ~ Fritz Leiber

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

I'm not sure I'm up for going to the moon. I'd rather go to Antigua as far as holiday destinations go. Well, they all went mental didn't they, astronauts? Perhaps it's very helpful because you're reminded that you have a very short life and really there's nothing to worry about at all. But then you might come back to earth and not give a sh*t about anything. - Stylist.co.uk, 2012 ~ Miranda Hart

I believe there are beautiful things seen by the astronauts. The indications revealed. That few of us realize life is quite surreal ~ Owl City

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

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?"
I start to cough and feel a hand pat my back.
"George, it's usually better to discuss this kind of thing with your pants on." Jase drops boxer shorts at George's feet, then sets Patsy on the ground next to him.
She's wearing a pink sunsuit and has one of those little ponytails that make one sprout of hair stick straight up on top all chubby arms and bowed legs. She's, what, one now?
"Dat?" she demands, pointing to me a bit belligerently.
"Dat is Samantha," Jase says. "Apparently soon to be your sister-in-law." He cocks an eyebrow. "You and George move fast."
"We talked astronauts," I explain ... ~ Huntley Fitzpatrick

Audiences of critical thinkers are my favorite kinds of audiences. There are jokes I tell in the show that don't get laughs unless I am in front of an audience of critical thinkers. Put me in front of a crowd of science teachers or astronauts! The guileless aren't our audience - it's the critical thinkers we love. ~ Adam Savage

Just in case God isn't dead, our astronauts carry sidearms. ~ Ben Lerner

There are four warring interests in spaceflight: ambitiousness of vision, urgency of timetable, reduction of cost, and safety to astronauts. These can never be entirely reconciled. In the sixties, urgency and ambitiousness were the driving factors, and because this was understood and accepted, the massive cost and risk were accepted as well. We now seem to be at a moment when reduction of cost is paramount, with safety coming in a very close second. This being the case, we should not be surprised that ambitiousness and urgency have had to be set aside altogether. But it's ludicrous to claim, as I often hear people do, that "NASA has lost its vision." NASA has lost support, not vision. Wernher ~ Margaret Lazarus Dean

In 1960-61, a small group of female pilots went through many of the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts and scored very well on them - in fact, better than some of the astronauts did. ~ Henry Spencer

If I had to shut my eyes it wouldn't have been any darker. We were like astronauts floating in a starless universe. ~ Ransom Riggs

The deep space transport uses a new type of propulsion system to send astronauts through space, called solar electric propulsion. The huge solar panels capture sunlight and convert it to electricity. This is used to strip away the electrons from a gas (like xenon), creating ions. An electric field then shoots these charged ions out one end of the engine, creating thrust. Unlike chemical engines, which can only fire for a few minutes, ion engines can slowly accelerate for months or even years. ~ Michio Kaku

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

Suppose two astronauts go to the moon. When they arrive, they have an accident and find out that they have only enough oxygen for two days. There is no hope of someone coming from Earth in time to rescue them. They have only two days to live. If you asked them at that moment, "What is your deepest wish?" they would answer, "To be back home walking on the beautiful planet Earth." That would be enough for them; they would not want anything else. They would not want to be the head of a large corporation, a big celebrity or president of the United States. They would not want anything except to be back on Earth - to be walking on Earth, enjoying every step, listening to the sounds of nature and holding the hand of their beloved while contemplating the moon.

We should live every day like people who have just been rescued from the moon. We are on Earth now, and we need to enjoy walking on this precious beautiful planet. The Zen master Lin Chi said, "The miracle is not to walk on water but to walk on the Earth." I cherish that teaching. I enjoy just walking, even in busy places like airports and railway stations. In walking like that, with each step caressing our Mother Earth, we can inspire other people to do the same. We can enjoy every minute of our lives. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Divas do it, golfers do it, pilots do it, violists do it, sprinters do it, soldiers do it, surgeons do it, astronauts do it ... only business people think it isn't necessary to train. ~ Tom Peters

The way I see myself, is like I'm this Martian flower. A flower on Mars, doing my own thing; this is my own planet, don't get too near me. And maybe an astronaut will come around one day, and say, "Hey, this is a cool planet, that's a cool flower, maybe I can stay here." You know? So far, the astronauts that visit, say, "Hey this is a cool planet and that's a cool flower, I wonder what happens if I pick this flower, bring it home and teach it how to grow in my backyard soil." I'm a Martian flower. I have my own planet, my own soil, I don't need to be anything other. It's a pretty great planet, but you have to have Mars in your heart to stay here. You need to turn Martian. Martian flowers don't grow in your backyard. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Star Trek speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow - it's not all going to be over with a big flash and a bomb; that the human race is improving; that we have things to be proud of as humans. No, ancient astronauts did not build the pyramids - human beings built them, because they're clever and they work hard. And Star Trek is about those things. ~ Gene Roddenberry

for one moment in time,
two lonely astronauts floating in space,
finally find each other. ~ James Brandon

The astronauts who came in with me in my astronaut class - my class had 29 men and 6 women - those men were all very used to working with women. ~ Sally Ride

At no time, when the astronauts were in space were they alone, there was a constant surveillance by UFOs. ~ Scott Carpenter

It's almost comical that astronauts are stereotyped as daredevils and cowboys. As a rule, we're highly methodical and detail-oriented. Our passion isn't for thrills but for the grindstone, and pressing our noses to it. ~ Chris Hadfield

But I also asked why they didn't chase their dreams. How many rock stars just settled for accountancy? How many astronauts grew up to be psychologists? Other kids were playing Mafia Wars, we were taking down the fucking Mafia and no it wasn't normal. It wasn't even close. ~ Mark Millar

What are you going to do with astronauts who first reach the surface of Mars and then turn around and rocket back home-ward? What are they going to do, write their memoirs? Would they go again? Having them repeat the voyage, in my view, is dim-witted. Why don't they stay there on Mars? ~ Buzz Aldrin

I think the best time to stare off into space is when you're going 65 on a motorcycle, provided you're wearing your astronaut's helmet. ~ Jarod Kintz

I don't know any astronauts. There are a lot of people who say they want to be comedians. ~ Todd Barry

I think professional cosmonaut trainer in fact said that we are the only two [with Damian Kulash ] he found fit to be astronauts, which is ridiculous because we are far from fit from being astronauts. So you can imagine what was going on up there. ~ Trish Sie

'Love' has that Kubrick tonality to it, but this is not a Stanley Kubrick movie - there will never be another. At the same time, 'Love' has a modern feel. For example: In one scene, these astronauts go through a wormhole sequence, and you feel like you're being slapped around inside your head by a sonic boom. ~ Tom DeLonge

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

Most of us stopped dreaming about being astronauts or firefighters or president a long time ago. Those who didn't.... Became astronauts and firefighters and president. Never stop dreaming ~ Ry

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

If we are to send people, it must be for a very good reason - and with a realistic understanding that almost certainly we will lose lives. Astronauts and Cosmonauts have always understood this. Nevertheless, there has been and will be no shortage of volunteers. ~ Carl Sagan

The successful golfers - they're like astronauts or pilots. They have that demeanor that they can focus and stay within that one moment and nothing distracts them. That's not me. ~ Ray Romano

Astronauts working for the government will always need to be either pilots or mission specialists. Those who want to be pilots should have military experience - ideally, a test pilot background. ~ Buzz Aldrin

"What's the next thing that's going to kill me?" is a mantra for pilots and astronauts. ~ Chris Hadfield

She came over and looked at the picture. Then she took my hand.
You know what that feels like?
Like what the astronauts will feel when they step onto the moon for the very first time. ~ Gary D. Schmidt

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

No one gets out of this world alive...except astronauts. ~ Stewart Stafford

I remember in 1967, when there was that terrible fire on NASA's Apollo 1 rocket that killed three astronauts, my father made pure oxygen and we lit this tiny cup and burned it. Suddenly, we had an unbelievable jet and a fire. You just could see exactly what had happened. ~ Jack W. Szostak

I was living in a small town in Indiana working as a telemarketer and a vacuum salesman. I was really bad: the vacuums seemed to always be falling apart. Every time I did a demonstration, I'd say, 'This is the material the astronauts used on Apollo 13.' And no sooner had that come out of my mouth, something would malfunction. ~ Adam Driver

I destroyed all my geek stuff because I didn't want to be a geek, and I regret it to this day. Consumed in the geek bonfire of the vanities was a collection of autographs and letters from Peter Cushing, Spike Milligan and Frankie Howerd, the first Doctor Whos, actual astronauts, and many more. ~ Peter Capaldi

The solid waste is returned to Earth with the shuttle. If we [astronauts] ever dump solid waste overboard, it's going to give new meaning to wishing upon a falling star. ~ Mike Mullane

Six times their weight (an acceleration of 6-g). Most riders, unless they were off-duty astronauts or high-performance pilots wearing g-suits, would be rendered unconscious by this force. There would be no oxygen supply getting through to the brain at all. Typically, fairground rides with child riders aim to keep accelerations below 2-g, and those for adults experience at most 4-g. ~ Anonymous

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

We must move into the universe. Mankind must save itself. We must escape the danger of war and politics. We must become astronauts and go out into the universe and discover the God in ourselves. ~ Ray Bradbury

More astronauts have been to the moon than farmers who paid the inheritance tax in 2013. ~ Bill Maher

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

Golf camaraderie, like that of astronauts and Antarctic explorers, is based on a common experience of transcendence; fat or thin, scratch or duffer, we have been somerwhere together where non-golfers never go. ~ John Updike

If you read about the astronauts who went to the moon - the 12 who walked on it, and the others who orbited - all suffered serious mental trauma of one kind or another. ~ James Gray

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

So when a little girl asks her father where the moon came from, he might tell her that the moon circles around the earth and reflects light from the sun. He might tell her that the moon likes to play hide-and-seek with the sun, so sometimes the moon looks like it's peeking out from behind a black curtain; sometimes all you can see is the top of its head, and sometimes you can't even see it at all! He might tell her about how the moon has invisible arms that can pull the oceans back and forth, making tides rise and fall. He might tell her that astronauts have walked on the moon and played golf on the moon and collected rocks from the moon. He might tell her that the moon has dimples and craters and basins that we can see only with a telescope and that there's a special place on the moon called the Sea of Tranquility that isn't really a sea. Then the father might take the little girl outside, hoist her up onto his shoulders, and let her stare at the moon for a while. He might recite a poem about a cow jumping over the moon or sing a song about a dreamy-eyed kid slow-dancing with it. Soon the little girl will become so lost in her father's beautiful stories that she will forget she ever had a question to begin with. ~ Rachel Held Evans

While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination." (from "The Third and Final Continent") ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

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

It would be great some day to have astronauts in a rover on Mars. But just about anyone except an oil company executive would say its more important to have 50 million solar powered vehicles in the United States. ~ Brad Sherman

No matter that astronauts and cosmonauts had perished in precisely designed and carefully tested machines. Solid engineering could always provide a safety margin, because the engineers believed, there was complete safety in numbers. ~ William E. Burrows

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

It was a real honor for me to get to be the first woman astronaut. I think it's really important that young girls that are growing up today can see that women can be astronauts too. There have actually been a lot of women, who are astronauts, that that's a career that's open to them. ~ Sally Ride

I think it's good to have competition. Now we have a third country that can launch astronauts, so it's good for all of us. It makes us a little bit more competitive and wanting to be the leader. ~ Leroy Chiao

It is an incredible treat and certainly one of the highlights of any astronaut's career to do a spacewalk. ~ Luca Parmitano

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

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 topography of Big Bend is so barren and jagged that America's astronauts in the 1960s took field trips to the park to prepare them for landing on the moon. ~ John Jameson

President Obama is launching a new $6 billion space policy that will ultimately take astronauts to Mars. Of course, it's $6 billion and $45 if the astronauts have a carry-on. ~ Jimmy Fallon

By 1973, we had a space station, the Skylab, and we had multiple probes going up to planets. So, all this wonderful stuff happened in 10 to 15 years. About that time, there should have been enormous initiatives to make it affordable for people to fly in space, not just a handful of trained NASA astronauts and Russian cosmonauts. ~ Burt Rutan

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, the three astronauts from Apollo 11 visited the White House. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were allowed to set foot inside the White House, while Michael Collins was forced to drive around in circles outside. ~ Conan O'Brien

My dad and my mom convinced me to go into biomedical engineering because they said astronauts going to Mars will need life support systems. ~ Rony Abovitz

During World War II, when combat rations were tinned, meat hashes were a common entrée because they worked well with the filling machines. "But the men wanted something they could chew, something into which they could 'sink their teeth,'" wrote food scientist Samuel Lepkovsky in a 1964 paper making the case against a liquid diet for the Gemini astronauts. He summed up the soldiers' take on potted meat: "We could undoubtedly survive on these rations a lot longer than we'd care to live." (NASA went ahead and tested an all-milkshake meal plan on groups of college students living in a simulated space capsule at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in 1964. A significant portion of it ended up beneath the floorboards.) ~ Mary Roach