Once I finally stepped on the moon, no matter what was to come of the next three days - or the rest of my life - nobody could take those steps from me. People ask how long will they be there, and I say forever, however long forever is, like my daughter’s initials that I scribbled in the sand [TDC for Tracy Dawn Cernan].

We don't have the capability today to put a human being in space of any kind, shape or form, which is absolutely, totally unacceptable when we got the greatest flying machine in the world sitting down at Kennedy in a garage there with nothing to do.

I hold the world speed record downhill, in a Rover. I think it was 17 kilometers per hour, downhill.

After Apollo 17, America stopped looking towards the next horizon. The United States had become a space-faring nation, but threw it away. We have sacrificed space exploration for space exploitation, which is interesting but scarcely visionary.

Chemical propulsion is obsolete to go anywhere other than the moon. Three days - that's acceptable. But for Mars, we need propulsion technologies to get us there in, say, 60 days - then spend whatever length of time we want to spend and return when we want to come home.

Today, we are on a path of decay. We are seeing the book close on five decades of accomplishment as the leader in human space exploration.

OK, let's get this mother out of here.