We should go boldly where man has not gone before. Fly by the comets, visit asteroids, visit the moon of Mars. There's a monolith there. A very unusual structure on this potato shaped object that goes around Mars once in seven hours. When people find out about that they're going to say 'Who put that there? Who put that there?' The universe put it there. If you choose, God put it there.

At 10,000 feet, the 3 parachutes would come out, a little lower the pressure of the atmosphere outside was greater than inside, and we could smell the salt air and it was very encouraging to return to earth.

Unless we are able to commit to a permanent growing settlement [on Mars], then I don't think just going there with humans and coming back is worth doing. The expense of planning to come back is like the people who left Europe to come to America and then to turn around and go back to Europe, it really doesn't make any sense at all.

We need the next generation to be motivated and to push technological boundaries, to seek out new innovations.

Somebody would think I was trying to get favored treatment because my ancestors had the name Moon. And that's a joke.

We must still think of ourselves as pioneers to understand the importance of space.

When I was a little kid, we only knew about our nine planets. Since then, we've downgraded Pluto but have discovered that other solar systems and stars are common. So life is probably quite prevalent.