Mastracchio Astronaut Quotes

The Moon did not consider that amongst the stars, there is no end. There is no fading away. There is no death in a place filled with forever, even though we all trick ourselves into thinking that this life we live now is the only life we will ever live. ~ Paul The Astronaut

Listening to critics is like letting Muhammad Ali decide which astronaut goes to the moon. ~ Robert Duvall

The library was home away from home to my mom, and my family. We had spent every Sunday afternoon there since I was a little boy, wandering around the stacks, pulling out every book with a picture of a pirate ship, a knight, a soldier, or an astronaut. My mom used to say, This is my church, Ethan. This is how we keep the Sabbath holy in our family. ~ Kami Garcia

I tell students that the opportunities I had were a result of having a good educational background. Education is what allows you to stand out. ~ Ellen Ochoa

He was an astronaut without a suit, but he was still breathing. ~ John Corey Whaley

When we were five, they asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. Our answers were thing like astronaut, president, or in my case ... princess.
When we were ten, they asked again and we answered - rock star, cowboy, or in my case, gold medalist. But now that we've grown up, they want a serious answer. Well, how 'bout this: who the hell knows?!
This isn't the time to make hard and fast decisions, its time to make mistakes. Take the wrong train and get stuck somewhere chill. Fall in love - a lot. Major in philosophy 'cause there's no way to make a career out of that. Change your mind. Then change it again, because nothing is permanent.
So make as many mistakes as you can. That way, someday, when they ask again what we want to be ... we won't have to guess. We'll know.
[from the movie] ~ Stephenie Meyer

I looked and looked but I didn't see God.
[Speaking about, in 1961, becoming the first human to enter space.] ~ Yuri Gagarin

Instead of an intellectual search, there was suddenly a very deep gut feeling that something was different. It occurred when looking at Earth and seeing this blue-and-white planet floating there, and knowing it was orbiting the Sun, seeing that Sun, seeing it set in the background of the very deep black and velvety cosmos, seeing - rather, knowing for sure - that there was a purposefullness of flow, of energy, of time, of space in the cosmos - that it was beyond man's rational ability to understand, that suddenly there was a nonrational way of understanding that had been beyond my previous experience.
There seems to be more to the universe than random, chaotic, purposeless movement of a collection of molecular particles.
On the return trip home, gazing through 240,000 miles of space toward the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious. ~ Edgar D. Mitchell

the astronaut David R. Scott performed the feather and lead weight experiment and found that indeed they did hit the ground at the same time. ~ Stephen Hawking

Make Believe

When I wake up in the morning
Not all is what it seems
I drift through a world of make believe
Between my real life and my dreams.

Strange Adventures from the space book
That I read the night before
Crowd in upon on my drowsiness
Through imagination's door.

Between sleeping and waking
The alarm clock's jangalang cry
Becomes the roaring fire-railed rocket
That hurls me through the sky.

My bed's a silver spacecraft
Which I pilot all alone
Whisp'ring through endless stratospheres
Towards planets still unknown.

Outside through the mists of morning
The spinning lights of cars
In my make-believe space voyage
Become eternities of stars.

Is that my mother calling something
That my dreams can't understand?
Or can it be crackling instructions
From far off Mission Command?

Gareth Owen ~ John Foster

I never want to be known. I'd rather be alone than have everyone talk about me and bother about my life. That's why I want to be an astronaut. I just want to travel into space and stay there. Be somewhere where no one else goes. ~ Aimee Herman

A mathematician tells you that the wall of warped space prevents the Moon from flying out of its orbit yet can't tell you why an astronaut can go back and forth across that same space. ~ Bill Gaede

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

Blinking, twinkling, burning bright
Are all the stars that light the night.
Dippers, Ursa's and Orion too,
But don't forget the star in you. ~ Paul The Astronaut

On the day I started college in 1979, no woman had ever been on the United States Supreme Court or served as the Speaker of the House. None had been an astronaut or the solo anchor of a network evening news broadcast. Not one had been president of an Ivy League college or run a serious campaign for president. ~ Dee Dee Myers

A Russian astronaut and a Russian brain surgeon were once discussing religion. The brain surgeon was a Christian but the astronaut was not. The astronaut said, 'I've been out in space many times but I've never seen God or angels.' And the brain surgeon said, 'And I've operated on many clever brains but I've never seen a single thought. ~ Jostein Gaarder

Then there was the challenge to keep doing better and better, to fly the best test flight that anybody had ever flown. That led to my being recognized as one of the more experienced test pilots, and that led to the astronaut business. ~ Alan Shepard

There was a small window when I wanted to be an astronaut. It may have coincided with not getting cast in a high school play. ~ Patrick J. Adams

I do not know your woes, Humans, but I do know that they are abundant. Believe in each other, and stand together, and you will conquer them all. ~ Paul The Astronaut

What I was most curious about was why Armstrong, a top U.S. Navy test pilot, flying the most advanced aircraft in the world, would want to join the astronaut corps in 1962, which included chimpanzees and monkeys. ~ Douglas Brinkley

I wanted to apply to the astronaut program after the Challenger accident ~ Eileen Collins

I didn't really realize that writing ... would be fun and people would pay you to do it. Being an astronaut is a glory profession, and so is writing, in a way. ~ Mary Roach

I was the first Navy, Marine or Air Force person who had been an astronaut to return back to the Air Force. I had certain expectations about what would be a reasonable and desirable position to be assigned to after my years of service. ~ Buzz Aldrin

To be one of the world's top space robotic arm operators is a necessary skill for an astronaut, but it doesn't have much carry-over. ~ Chris Hadfield

We have never lost a crew member on the space station, but of course, the Columbia accident. I was - I'd already been an astronaut for a decade when the crew of Columbia was killed. And I went through test pilot school. Rick Husband and I were out at Edwards at test pilot school together. He was the commander of Columbia. ~ Chris Hadfield

The great thing about being an astronaut is you kind of get to do a little bit of everything. I mean, we're going to ride a rocket uphill. ~ David M. Brown

The photographs of space taken by our astronauts have been published all over the place. But the eye is a much more dynamic mechanism than any camera or pictures. It's a more exciting view in person than looking at the photographs. Of course, I personally am sick and tired of hearing people talk like that: I want to see it myself! ~ Burt Rutan

As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind - every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder. ~ John Glenn

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

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.

I worked for some very good people who have helped me along the way and actually enabled me to have the opportunity to be selected to join the Astronaut Corps. ~ Duane G. Carey

He said that it was very difficult to become an astronaut. I said that I knew. You had to become an officer in the air force and you had to take lots of orders and be prepared to kill other human beings, and I couldn't take orders. Also I didn't have 20/20 vision, which you needed to be a pilot. ~ Mark Haddon

The purpose of going to Mars is for humans to first begin to occupy, permanently, another planet in the solar system. The astronauts or pilgrims, whatever you might call them, are going to be very historically unique human beings. ~ Buzz Aldrin

'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

I remember reading about Mae Jemison, that astronaut. That was immensely fantastic to me. This woman went to the moon! ~ Juliana Rotich

I'm just a big boy, I'm still just playing cowboys and Indians and astronaut and baseball player and all that stuff that I used to play as a kid. ~ Bryan Cranston

The problem is that people have tried to look away from space and from the meaning of the moon landing. I remember seeing a picture of an astronaut standing on the moon. It was up at Yale and someone has scrawled on it, 'So what?' That is the arrogance of the kind of academic narrowness one too often sees; it is trapped in its own predictable prejudices, its own stale categories. It is the mind dulled to the poetry of existence. It's fashionable now to demand some economic payoff from space, some reward to prove it was all worthwhile. Those who say this resemble the apelike creatures in 2001. They are fighting for food among themselves, while one separates himself from them and moves to the slab, motivated by awe. That is the point they are missing. He is the one who evolves into a human being; he is the one who understands the future. ~ Joseph Campbell

He addressed the class ... in a soft, stupefied, increasingly breathless tone like an astronaut pleading with a mad supercomputer to open an airlock. ~ Michael Chabon

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

I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did. ~ Neil Armstrong

But at times words can be a dangerous addition to music - they can pin it down. Words imply that the music is about what the words say, literally, and nothing more. If done poorly, they can destroy the pleasant ambiguity that constitutes much of the reason we love music. That ambiguity allows listeners to psychologically tailor a song to suit their needs, sensibilities, and situations, but words can limit that, too. There are plenty of beautiful tracks that I can't listen to because they've been "ruined" by bad words - my own and others. In Beyonce's song "Irreplaceable," she rhymes "minute" with "minute," and I cringe every time I hear it (partly because by that point I'm singing along). On my own song "Astronaut," I wrap up with the line "feel like I'm an astronaut," which seems like the dumbest metaphor for alienation ever. Ugh. ~ David Byrne

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 not making light of prayers here, but of so-called school prayer, which bears as much resemblance to real spiritual experienceas that freeze-dried astronaut food bears to a nice standing rib roast. From what I remember of praying in school, it was almost an insult to God, a rote exercise in moving your mouth while daydreaming or checking out the cutest boy in the seventh grade that was a far, far cry from soul-searching. ~ Anna Quindlen

Brave and anal: the ideal space explorer. Though you don't find "anal" on any of those lists of recommended astronaut attributes. NASA doesn't really use words like anal. Unless they have to. ~ Mary Roach