Buzz Aldrin Quotes

There's no doubt that there will be many trials and tribulations along the way in taming space for the benefit of all, unmasking its truths and using the boundless resources available to us. Taking a chance allows us to seek new horizons -- and we all benefit from being horizon hunters.

I think the people who experienced the Apollo missions came away from that experience wondering to themselves, 'When can we get a chance to experience spaceflight?' I've heard that many, many times: that people got into a new career field hoping that they would be able to experience spaceflight.

History will remember the inhabitants of this century as the people who went from Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years, only to languish for the next 30 in low Earth orbit. At the core of the risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve.

If we can conquer space, we can conquer childhood hunger.

There may be aliens in our Milky Way galaxy, and there are billions of other galaxies. The probability is almost certain that there is life somewhere in space.

People communicate in Twittering ways. I've learned how to do that.

At the core of the risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve.

When President Kennedy took office, I was in the midst of my education.

A mind concerned about danger is a clouded mind. It's paralyzing.

As a student, I wrote English reports on science fiction.

I came to dedicate my life to opening space to the average person and crafting designs for new spaceships that could take us far from home. But since Apollo ended, such travels were only in our collective memory.

Everyone who's been in space would, I'm sure, welcome the opportunity for a return to the exhilarating experiences there.

Once you've been first, it cannot be done again. Not by you, not by anyone else.

My expertise is the space program and what it should be in the future based on my experience of looking at the transitions that we've made between pre-Sputnik days and getting to the moon.

I remember it was hard to believe that I was taking a step onto the lunar surface.

I know: If you're looking down at Earth, you're looking through an atmosphere that has a bit of haze in many places and not just occasional clouds.

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?

Going back to the moon is not visionary in restoring space leadership for America. Like its Apollo predecessor, it will prove to be a dead end littered with broken spacecraft, broken dreams and broken policies.

Nobody ever asks who was the seventh person on the Moon. The only thing they know is who's number one and who's number two. Does anybody know who the last man was?

The urge to explore has propelled evolution since the first water creatures reconnoitered the land. Like all living systems, cultures cannot remain static; they evolve or decline. They explore or expire. . . . Beyond all rationales, space flight is a spiritual quest in the broadest sense, one promising a revitalization of humanity and a rebirth of hope no less profound than the great opening out of mind and spirit at the dawn of our modern age.

The g-forces increased and I wasn't able to continue to hold the camera against the window, so I had to lay it back against my chest, but still continued to photograph the re-entry until there was no more unusual visual effects of the energy in the atmosphere. And it was very comforting to understand that the people in Houston, the controllers, had very high confidence that we were on the right path.

The energy varies with the square of the velocity, so if you need five times the velocity, that's 25 times the energy.

The decision to go to the moon is now appreciated and associated with President Kennedy's speech, but somebody else had told him it was a good idea. It turned out to be a good commitment, but it was a unique situation.

The big companies are the private industry. But they're faced with a short-term need to show a profit in short-term.

I'm sure the most favorite airplane in my career would still be the Sabre F86 cleft wing , which allowed me to be credited with 2 Russian-built Mig-15 destroyed during the Korean War. Where I was in 1953.

Six out of seven times we landed successfully [on the Moon]. I wanted to be a part of that and I was a part of that, so my personal feeling is of great gratefulness for having somehow been in a position to have been given the opportunity to be on that first landing. That's a marvelous experience for a little kid that grew up in New Jersey. So I'm very thankful, and I asked the whole world to give thanks once we successfully landed.

Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.

I'm in favor of changing the destination of humans. There are a lot of manned missions that can be done, but not in the direction of the moon.

Just as Mars - a desert planet - gives us insights into global climate change on Earth, the promise awaits for bringing back to life portions of the Red Planet through the application of Earth Science to its similar chemistry, possibly reawakening its life-bearing potential.

Long-term, I see robotics prevailing on the moon. . . . The most important decision we'll have to make about space travel is whether to commit to a permanent human presence on Mars. Without it, we'll never be a true space-faring people.

Look at what Silicon Valley has done - the advance of computers.

Is the destiny of the human species to sit back and play with our mouse and computer and imagine, fantasize?

To send humans back to the moon would not be advancing. It would be more than 50 years after the first moon landing when we got there, and we'd probably be welcomed by the Chinese. But we should return to the moon without astronauts and build, with robots, an international lunar base, so that we know how to build a base on Mars robotically.

I felt pretty confident in relieving myself, since I had the urge.

I want to keep on the move, keep stimulated and challenged.

Standing on the Moon looking back at Earth - this lovely place you just came from - you see all the colours, and you know what they represent. Having left the water planet, with all that water brings to Earth in terms of colour and abudance life, the absence of water and atmosphere on the desolate surface of the Moon gives rise to a stark contrast.

Not everyone can be an astronaut and go into space, some people with sufficient resources can purchase and fly sub-orbitally thanks to various companies and for more money (considerably) fly into orbit.

We really didn't devote a lot of time to investigating the scariest aspects of our flight. It was more challenging and productive to concentrate on the remedies, and leave things that couldn't be solved to happen without thinking about them. There is a morbid human curiosity associated with tragic death-producing events. Though naturally, this needs to be kept in perspective.

In Mars, we've been given a wonderful set of moons where we can send continuous numbers of people.

I don't think we're going to build a 50-person spacecraft or a 100-person spacecraft.

History gets reinterpreted as time goes on. Many times, the participants are lost in the retelling of the story.

Any observations from the Moon or a sense of realising this or that about the greater meaning of things wasn't as influential for me as the experience of coming back and dealing with being a person who's been to the Moon.

Most people never believed in the real possibility of going to the moon, and neither did I until I was in my twenties.

I understand that Detroit was a pretty rough place to grow up in the '70s and '80s.

It's been one of the greatest challenges that ever came along in my life; it was one of the more difficult things to do.

When we set out to land people on the surface of Mars, I think we should as a nation, as a world, commit ourselves to supporting a growing settlement and colonization there. To visit a few times and then withdraw would be an unforgivable waste of resources.

Mars has been flown by, orbited, smacked into, radar examined, and rocketed onto, as well as bounced upon, rolled over, shoveled, drilled into, baked and even blasted. Still to come: Mars being stepped on.

I wrote 'Reaching for the Moon' because I wanted to tell kids that all of us have a moon, a dream, that we can strive for. Even if you don't attain it, you can at least reach for it.