If we can conquer space, we can conquer childhood hunger.
Buzz Aldrin
Mars is there, waiting to be reached.
Whenever I gaze up at the moon, I feel like I'm on a time machine. I am back to that precious pinpoint of time, standing on the foreboding - yet beautiful - Sea of Tranquility. I could see our shining blue planet Earth poised in the darkness of space.
I think the American Dream used to be achieving one's goals in your field of choice - and from that, all other things would follow. Now, I think the dream has morphed into the pursuit of money: Accumulate enough of it, and the rest will follow.
Timing has always been a key element in my life. I have been blessed to have been in the right place at the right time.
I still say, 'Shoot for the moon; you might get there.'
The biggest benefit of Apollo was the inspiration it gave to a growing generation to get into science and aerospace.
The pilgrims on the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock. To my knowledge, they didn't wait around for a return trip to Europe. You settle some place with a purpose. If you don't want to do that, stay home. You avoid an awful lot of risks by not venturing outward.
Fighter pilots have ice in their veins. They don't have emotions. They think, anticipate. They know that fear and other concerns cloud your mind from what's going on and what you should be involved in.
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.
As someone who flew two space capsules and twice landed in the ocean, I can attest from personal experience how much logistics work is needed to get you home.
Space tourism is a logical outgrowth of the adventure tourist market.
There's a historical milestone in the fact that our Apollo 11 landing on the moon took place a mere 66 years after the Wright Brothers' first flight.
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.
A hybrid human-robot mission to investigate an asteroid affords a realistic opportunity to demonstrate new technological capabilities for future deep-space travel and to test spacecraft for long-duration spaceflight.
Exploring and colonizing Mars can bring us new scientific understanding of climate change, of how planet-wide processes can make a warm and wet world into a barren landscape. By exploring and understanding Mars, we may gain key insights into the past and future of our own world.
My favourite thing to do on this planet is to scuba dive.
A family needs to work as a team, supporting each other's individual aims and aspirations.
It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the Moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements.
We can continue to try and clean up the gutters all over the world and spend all of our resources looking at just the dirty spots and trying to make them clean. Or we can lift our eyes up and look into the skies and move forward in an evolutionary way.
There's a need for accepting responsibility - for a person's life and making choices that are not just ones for immediate short-term comfort. You need to make an investment, and the investment is in health and education.
The way I see it, what is going to come out of the moon activities is a respect for U.S. leadership.
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.
I don't watch 'American Idol,' but I wouldn't call it 'undignified.'
What's aero braking? That's a way to use the gravity and upper atmosphere of Earth to sling shot a ship out either deeper into space, or slow it down to be 'captured' by Earth's gravity.
Nobody cares about the bronze or silver medals.
Mars has been flown by, orbited, smacked into, radar inspected, and rocketed onto, as well as bounced upon, rolled over, shoveled, drilled into, baked, and even laser blasted.
Sending a couple of guys to the Moon and bringing them back safely? That's a stunt! That's not historic.
For the future, primarily, we must educate people in science, engineering, technology and math.
Before deciding what to do about national space policy, Obama set up an outside review panel of space experts, headed up by my friend Norm Augustine, former head of Lockheed Martin and a former government official.
Globalisation means many other countries are asserting themselves and trying to take over leadership. Please don't ask Americans to let others assume the leadership of human exploration. We can do wonderful science on the Moon, and wonderful commercial things. Then we can pack up and move on to Mars.
As we reflect back upon the tragic loss of Challenger and her brave crew of heroes who were aboard that fateful day, I am reminded that they truly represented the best of us, as they climbed aloft on a plume of propellant gasses, reaching for the stars, to inspire us who were Earthbound.
Ray Bradbury is one who is contributing to the understanding of the imagination and the curiosity of the human race.
Computers allow us to squeeze the most out of everything, whether it's Google looking up things, so I guess that tends to make us a little lazy about reading books and doing things the hard way to understand how those things work.
American greatness was elevated significantly after Sputnik.
Space architectures capable of supporting a permanent human presence on Mars are extraordinarily complex, with many different interdependent systems.
The purpose of going to Mars is for humans to first begin to occupy, permanently, another planet in the solar system. The astronauts or pilgrims, whatever you might call them, are going to be very historically unique human beings.
I've been to the Titanic in a yellow submarine and the North Pole in a Russian nuclear ice breaker.
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.
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.
Unfortunately, kids are led to believe things are easier to achieve than they really are.
My first inclination is to be a bit skeptical about the claims that human-produced carbon dioxide is the direct contributor to global warming.
Walking around on the moon was significantly easier than we'd thought it would be. There weren't any balance problems, so you weren't tumbling over.
I understand that Detroit was a pretty rough place to grow up in the '70s and '80s.
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.
You can tell I'm not too bashful about some of my feelings.
The guys who walk on Mars are going to be historic.
I'm sure that there are places in the deserts in Australia that could be similar to where we might want to go on Mars.
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?
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.
