Space Shuttle Disaster Quotes

The future doesn't belong to the light-hearted. It belongs to the brave. ~ Ronald Reagan

I witnessed the building of the Space Shuttle Columbia, the first orbiter to be launched into space. ~ Rene Burri

There's a huge amount of pressure on every astronaut, because when you get right down to it, the experiments that are conducted on a space flight, or the satellites that are carried up, the work that's to be done, is important and expensive work, and you are up there for a week or two on a Space Shuttle flight. The country has invested a lot of money in you and your training, and the Space Shuttle and everything that's in it, and you have to do things correctly. You can't make a mistake during that week or two that you're in space. ~ Sally Ride

We have played a critical role in meeting the new safety standards. The Canadian space industry contributed new tools that make the inspection of the space shuttle possible. ~ Marc Garneau

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it seems to make things harder, leaving us with fifty-button remote controls, digital cameras with hundreds of mysterious features and book-length manuals, and cars with dashboard systems worthy of the space shuttle. ~ James Surowiecki

I think the Space Shuttle is worth one billion dollars a launch. I think that it is worth two billion dollars for what it does. I think the Shuttle is worth it for the work it does. ~ Pete Conrad

Without electricity or gas, the kitchen became a twilight mausoleum of dead appliances. One day, Natasha had an idea. Wearing latex gloves she found in Sonja's room, she scrubbed the innards of the oven and refrigerator with steel wool and bleach. She cut a broomstick to the width of the refrigerator compartment, jammed it in below the thermostat control, and pulled out the plastic shelves. In her bedroom, she gathered clothes from the floor in sweeping armfuls and deposited them before the refrigerator and the oven. Ever since she had begun working for the shuttle trader, her wardrobe exceeded her closet space. She hung silk evening dresses and cashmere sweaters on the broomstick bar, set folded jeans and blouses on the oven rack. When finished, she opened the doors to her new closet and bureau and felt pleased with her ingenuity. This is how you will survive, she told herself. You will turn the holes in your life into storage space. ~ Anthony Marra

NASA is developing space taxis to shuttle astronauts to the International Space Station. And just like New York taxis, they're all going to be driven by aliens. ~ Jimmy Fallon

I will go around the space shuttle and give a guided tour of the major areas and describe what is done in each area. This will be called The Ultimate Field Trip. ~ Christa McAuliffe

You know something I could really do without? The Space Shuttle ... It's irresponsible. The last thing we should be doing is sending our grotesquely distorted DNA out into space. ~ George Carlin

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in Russia, Hermann Olberth in Germany, and Robert Goddard in the United States all came up with an eerily similar concept for using liquid fuel to power rockets for human spaceflight. I've seen this pointed out as an odd coincidence, one of those moments when an idea inexplicably emerges in multiple places at once. But when I read through each of these three men's biographies I discovered why they all had the same idea: all three of them were obsessed with Jules Verne's 1865 novel "De la terre a la lune (From the Earth to the Moon)." The novel details the strange adventures of three space explorers who travel to the moon together. What sets Verne's book apart from the other speculative fiction of the time was his careful attention to the physics involved in space travel -- his characters take pains to explain to each other exactly how and why each concept would work. All three real-life scientists -- the Russian, the German, and the American -- were following what they had learned from a French science fiction writer. ~ Margaret Lazarus Dean

I think both the space shuttle program and the International Space Station program have not really lived up to their expectations. ~ Buzz Aldrin

Every astronaut flew into space for a living. But while NASA has not solved the security problems, I would not put me back into a shuttle - and no other astronaut. The confidence is shaken. ~ Ulrich Walter

After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the things that had gone wrong. ~ Sally Ride

Sometimes you gotta say what's in your heart... And you have to stand for what you believe. No matter what."
~'Dr. Michael C. Anders, ~ Stephanie Osborn

The shuttle tomorrow is truly like laying the last spike on the transcontinental railroad, only much more so. And whether or not we're going to see in in the next 10 or 20 years, there are people alive today who will see manufacturing in space from moon materials or from asteroids. ~ Jerry Brown

The Soviets were worried that the Americans would attack their "sparkling new Mir space station, ... in a space shuttle, throw out grappling hooks, forcibly board the peaceful habitat and claim it as captured territory. To the hard-core Soviet mind-set, the American government was an unstable combination of cowboys and gangsters, unpredictable and capable of any insane action. The cosmonauts would have to be armed against outrageous aggression. ~ James Mahaffey

The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn't even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we'd never have had the light bulb. ~ Elon Musk

The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident. ~ Sally Ride

The seven of us on board [the Space Shuttle] represented five different religions. But we were all agreed - it just doesn't make sense how people on earth treat each other. It doesn't make any difference what language we speak. It doesn't make any difference what country we come from. It certainly doesn't make any difference what the color of our skin is. We are all children of God traveling on spaceship earth together. ~ Jake Garn

My daughter just thinks that all moms fly the Space Shuttle ~ Eileen Collins

Think about it, Lee - we already know that intelligent minds produce finely tuned devices. Look at the space shuttle. Look at a television set. Look at an internal combustion engine. We see minds producing complex, precision machinery all the time.

So the existence of a supermind - or God - as the explanation for the fine - tuning of the universe makes all sense in the world. ~ Lee Strobel

Our nation is indeed fortunate that we can still draw on an immense reservoir of courage, character, and fortitude, that we are still blessed with heroes like those of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Man will continue his conquest of space. To reach out for new goals and ever-greater achievements, that is the way we shall commemorate our seven Challenger heroes. ~ Ronald Reagan

Two things can take you to the Moon: A space shuttle or a sweet love! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

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

The launch of a space shuttle can still make you weep with amazement and wonder, if you happen to be watching it. ~ Hanna Rosin

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

There is just no way that I can understand in God's green earth that an airline could undertake with its normal procedures the operation of the Space Shuttle ... You don't put parachutes on airliners because the margin of safety is built into the machine. The 727 airplanes we fly are proven vehicles with levels of safety and redundancy built in. The shuttle is a hand-made piece of experimental gear. ~ Frank Borman

I remember reading that the space shuttle uses more fuel during its first three minutes after liftoff than during its entire voyage around the earth, ~ Robin S. Sharma

Three years after the United States ended the space shuttle program, the American space agency today announced the return of "human space flight to U.S. soil." NASA has chosen two spaceships, the Boeing CST-100 and SpaceX Dragon version 2, to bring American astronauts to the International Space Station. The program will cost $6.8 billion. ~ Anonymous

It's very sad that there's going to be a hiatus in manned space flight from the U.S. The Shuttle was a fantastic, hugely complex vehicle. It was inevitable it would come to an end, but this is the opportunity for the commercial world to get involved. As the Shuttle era ends, another window of opportunity opens. ~ David Mackay

The space shuttle was designed, at least in part, to broaden our knowledge of the universe. To scientists, the vehicle was a tool; to engineers, it was their creation. ~ Henry Petroski

Somehow he released her hand and pulled his free. He wrapped his arms around her and hauled her against him so her entire body pressed against his. The man was a rock. Big, unyielding and warmed by the sun. She wanted to snuggle even closer. She wanted to rip off her clothes and give the goats something to talk about. She wanted--
He licked her lower lip.
The unexpected moist heat made her gasp as fire raced through her. Every singed nerve ending vibrated with need for more. The masculine, slightly piney scent of him surrounded her. Operating only on instinct, she parted her lips to allow him entry. She had a single heartbeat to brace herself for the power of his tongue touching hers. Then he swept inside and blew her away.
It was like being inside the space shuttle on take-off. Phoebe might not have any personal experience with space flight, but she could imagine. The powerful force between them left her weak and clinging to his broad shoulders. She trembled and needed and ached with equal intensity.
His tongue brushed against hers again. He tasted of coffee and mint and something wonderfully sensual and sweet. His mouth seemed designed for kissing. Maybe it was all that non-conversation. Maybe talking too much undermined a man's ability to kiss. She didn't know and didn't care. All that mattered was the way he stroked her, touched her, teased her. He cupped her head with one hand and ran his other up and down her back. If only this moment would never end ~ Susan Mallery

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

A lot of these things will fly in later forms on the space station themselves, or a later form of that research will, once they kind of find out some of the basics from flying it on shuttle. ~ Linda M. Godwin