Shuttles Quotes

Toward the end of his second decade in the airport, Clark was thinking about how lucky he'd been. Not just the mere fact of survival, which was of course remarkable in and of itself, but to have seen one world end and another begin. And not just to have seen the remembered splendors of the former world, the space shuttles and the electrical grid and the amplified guitars, the computers that could be held in the palm of a hand and the high-speed trains between cities, but to have lived among those wonders for so long. To have dwelt in that spectacular world for fifty-one years of his life. Sometimes he lay awake in Concourse B of the Severn City Airport and thought, "I was there," and the thought pierced him through with an admixture of sadness and exhilaration. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

Not until each loom is silent, And the shuttles cease to fly, Will God unroll the pattern And explain the reason why The dark threads are as needful In the Weaver's skillful hand, As the threads of gold and silver For the pattern which He planned. ~ Lettie B. Cowman

A lot of kids owned their own interplanetary vehicles. School parking lots all over Ludus were filled with UFOs, TIE fighters, old NASA space shuttles, Vipers from Battlestar Galactica, and other spacecraft designs lifted from every sci-fi movie and TV show you can think of. ~ Ernest Cline

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

She gazed at the bay of wrecked shuttles in dismay. The last of her adrenaline seeped away at the sight of the widespread destruction.

It occurred to her then, for perhaps the first time in this long nightmare, that she was going to die. ~ G.S. Jennsen

Taking a shuttle or even paying for a taxi to a rental office that's a few miles away from the airport can mean a lower rate - 50 percent lower is common - for the same car, from the same company, for the same length of time. Many companies run free shuttles from some of the major airports. ~ Jean Chatzky

Instead of planning the retirement of the Space Shuttle program, America should be preparing the shuttles for their next step in space: evolving, not shutting them down and laying off thousands of people. ~ Buzz Aldrin

In all the Kalahari Desert, only six true hunters remained. The renegades agreed to let Louis hang around, an offer he took to the extreme; once installed, Louis acted like an unemployed in-law, basically squatting with the Bushmen for the next four years ... He learned to keep his campfire burning and tent zipped even on the most sweltering nights, since packs of hyenas were known to drag people from open shelters and tear out their throats. He leaned that if you stumble upon an angry lioness and her cubs, you stand tall and make her back down, but in the same situation with a rhino, you run like hell. (p. 234) Know why people run marathons? he said ... Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles ... intravascular surgery, they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human- which means it's a superpower all humans possess. (p. 239) ~ Christopher McDougall

A common misconception about how things such as space shuttles come to be is that engineers simply apply the theories and equations of science. But this cannot be done until the new thing-to-be is conceived in the engineer's mind's eye. Rather than following from science, engineered things lead it. ~ Henry Petroski

We call the fates of the Titanic and the Concordia - as well as those of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia - 'accidents.' Foreseeing such undesirable events is what engineers are expected to do. However, design trade-offs leave technological systems open to failings once predicted, but later forgotten. ~ Henry Petroski

Science, like nothing else among the institutions of mankind, grows like a weed every year. Art is subject to arbitrary fashion, religion is inwardly focused and driven only to sustain itself, law shuttles between freeing us and enslaving us. ~ Kary Mullis

Know why people run marathons? he told Dr. Bramble. Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles, Starry Night, intravascular surgery; they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human - which means it's a superpower all humans possess. ~ Christopher McDougall

My Christmas present? That's nice. But I'm not really in the mood to - "
"Open the goddamn thing or I'll kill you where you stand."
"Sir! Opening it." She ripped the paper, stuffed it hurriedly in her pocket, and pulled off the lid. "It's a key code."
"That's right. It's to the ground transpo that'll be at the airport over in that foreign country. Air transpo's been arranged, for two, on one of Roarke's private shuttles. Round trip. Merry fricking Christmas. Do what you want with it."
"I - you - one of the shuttles? Free?" Peabody's cheeks went pink as a summer rose. "And - and - and - a vehicle when we get there? It's so ... It's so seriously mag."
"Great. Can we go now?"
"Dallas!"
"No. No. No hugs. No hugs. No. Oh, shit," she muttered as Peabody threw her arms around her and squeezed. "We're on duty, we're in public. Let me go or I swear I'll kick your ass so hard that extra five pounds you're whining about will end up in Trenton. ~ J.D. Robb

Anyone know if the shuttles to Hell will have Wifi? Asking for a friend. ~ Jim Gaffigan

Parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go. ~ Fred Rogers

I'm urging NASA to foster the development of what I call 'runway landers.' No, that's not the name of a high stakes gambler from Vegas. It's a type of spacecraft that flies to orbit like the retiring Shuttles but then glides to a landing like an airplane on a runway. Just like the Shuttles do. ~ Buzz Aldrin

But technology is the real skin of our species. Humanity, correctly seen in the context of the last five hundred years, is an extruder of technological material. We take in matter that has a low degree of organization; we put it through mental filters, and we extrude jewelry, gospels, space shuttles. This is what we do. We are like coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psychic objects. All our tool making implies our belief in an ultimate tool. That tool is the flying saucer, or the soul, exteriorized in three-dimensional space. ~ Terence McKenna

This one sank deep into her marrow and made her heart soar like the shuttles piercing the stratosphere. ~ Katherine McIntyre

Shuttles in the rocking loom of history,
the dark ships move, the dark ships move,
their bright ironical names
like jests of kindness on a murderer's mouth ~ Robert Hayden

A large chunk of the shuttle's wrecked fuselage sparked and disconnected with a wheezing raspberry. Lis and Palaxa stared at the fizzing rubble and caught each other's eye. Both burst into peals of laughter. ~ Caroline Noe

Science, the largest religion of the twentieth century, had become somewhat tarnished by images of exploding space shuttles, crack babies, and a generation of complacent Americans who had allowed the television to raise their children. ~ Jim Butcher

An artist in this nuthouse century is like a man running an obstacle race fitted out with all the gadgets of our riotous technology. He gets blown a mile into the air on a jet of liquid helium, shuttles about on little rocket tubes, plunges into the deeps of the ocean, shoots out again a hundred miles into the space while lurid sights and sounds shred his senses. Every year, every month, and 'panoptic' work appears and warps his consciousness into a new shape. Knowledge itself is in a molten, a plasmatic state and what titanic electromagnetic grip of intellect would be required to lock it solid long enough to reach artistic fusion point? The damned language becomes obsolete as it clatters from the typewriter. ~ Paul Ableman

As jolaha ka maram na jana, jinh jag ani pasarinhh tana;
dharti akas dou gad khandaya, chand surya dou nari banaya;
sahastra tar le purani puri, ajahu bine kathin hai duri;
kahai kabir karm se jori, sut kusut bine bhal kori;
No one could understand the secret of this weaver who, coming into existence, spread the warp as the world; He fixed the earth and the sky as the pillars, and he used the sun and the moon as two shuttles; He took thousands of stars and perfected the cloth; but even today he weaves, and the end is difficult to fathom.
Kabir says that the weaver, getting good or bad yarn and connecting karmas with it, weaves beautifully. ~ Kabir

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

Then during the mission itself, I used the space shuttle's robot arm to release a satellite into orbit. ~ Sally Ride

For suppose that every tool we had could perform its task, either at our bidding or itself perceiving the need, and if-like the statues made by Daedalus or the tripods of Hephaestus, of which the poet says that "self-moved they enter the assembly of the gods" - shuttles in a loom could fly to and fro and a plectrum play a lyre all self-moved, then master-craftsmen would have no need of servants nor masters of slaves. ~ Aristotle.

Children of yesterday, / Heirs of to-morrow, / What are you weaving? / Labor and sorrow? / Look to your looms again. / Faster and faster / Fly the great shuttles / Prepared by the Master, / Life's in the loom, / Room for it - / Room! ~ Mary Lasswell

Swiftly the brain becomes an enchanted loom, where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern-always a meaningful pattern-though never an abiding one. ~ Charles Scott Sherrington

It isn't only the Utopians who become a little more immortal with every blade they take away. It isn't only they who delight in seeing unicorns and wingrays in the street, who gaze through Griffincloth into enchanting nowheres, and ride the shuttles to the brave, bare Moon, which their efforts make a little less bare every day. We all enjoy these wonders, all of us, all Hives, all Hiveless. Reader, you should not have barred Apollo Mojave from the Pantheon. ~ Ada Palmer

Anyways. I heard you made it onto one of the shuttles. So you're Schrödinger's Kady right now. That was this weird old Terran experiment where you put a cat in a box, and since you couldn't actually know if the cat was dead or alive from that point on, the cat was considered simultaneously both alive and dead... and presumably pissed off about being in a box. ~ Amie Kaufman

A tractor beam from the Imperial ship locked onto the shuttle and in seconds it became apparent they were being hauled in. The tractor was inescapable, and they knew it. The shuttle's small yet potent engines struggled vainly against the irresistible pull. Inside, the Hammer and his men prepared to meet their fate. ~ Christina Engela

Know why people run marathons? ... Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles, Starry Night, intravascular surgery; they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human - which means its a superpower all humans posses. ~ Christopher McDougall

I spent an hour yesterday watching the ladies bathe. What a sight! What a hideous sight! The two sexes used to bathe together here. But now they are kept separate by means of signposts, preventive nets, and a uniformed inspector – nothing more depressingly grotesque can be imagined. However, yesterday, from the place where I was standing in the sun, with my spectacles on my nose, I could contemplate the bathing beauties at my leisure. The human race must indeed have become absolutely moronic to have lost its sense of elegance to this degree. Nothing is more pitiful than these bags in which women encase their bodies, and these oilcloth caps! What faces! What figures! And what feet! Red, scrawny, covered with corns and bunions, deformed by shoes, long as shuttles or wide as washerwomen's paddles. And in the midst of everything, scrofulous brats screaming and crying. Further off, grandmas knitting and respectable old gentlemen with gold-rimmed spectacles reading newspapers, looking up from time to time between lines to savor the vastness of the horizon with an air of approval. The whole thing made me long all afternoon to escape from Europe and go live in the Sandwich Islands or the forests of Brazil. There, at least, the beaches are not polluted by such ugly feet, by such foul-looking specimens of humanity. ~ Gustave Flaubert