quotations about space travel and exploration

NASA's next urgent mission should be to send good poets into space so they can describe what it's really like.
SHANNON HALE
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Dangerous
My descendants are going to surf light-waves in space.
KATHERINE MACLEAN
"The Missing Man"
Lewis loved fishing in space. Yes, I know there are no fish in space, but catching fish is not at all the main point of fishing. Ninety percent of the activity is sitting with rod and reel just simply mulling things over. Lewis spent hours in a space suit sitting on top of the Ray with his line dangling, contemplating the sheer beauty of the Universe.
ERIC IDLE
The Road to Mars: A Post-Modem Novel
We who were meant to roam the stars go now on foot upon a ravaged earth. But above us those other worlds still hang, and still they beckon. And so is the promise still given. If we make not the mistakes of the Old Ones then shall we know in time more than the winds of this earth and the trails of this earth.
ANDRE NORTON
Star Man's Son
As long as we are a single-planet species, we are vulnerable to extinction by a planetwide catastrophe, natural or self-induced. Once we become a multiplanet species, our chances to live long and prosper will take a huge leap skyward.
DAVID GRINSPOON
Slate, January 7, 2004
Some say that we should stop exploring space, that the cost in human lives is too great. But Columbia's crew would not have wanted that. We are a curious species, always wanting to know what is over the next hill, around the next corner, on the next island. And we have been that way for thousands of years.
STUART ATKINSON
New Mars, March 7, 2003
Today the stars and tomorrow the galaxies. No force exists in the Universe that can stop us.
JAMES P. HOGAN
Inherit the Stars
In my mind, public space travel will precede efforts toward exploration -- be it returning to the moon, going to Mars, visiting asteroids, or whatever seems appropriate. We've got millions and millions of people who want to go into space, who are willing to pay. When you figure in the payload potential of customers, everything changes.
BUZZ ALDRIN
Esquire, January 2003
Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.
CARL SAGAN
Cosmos
Space travel is like hanging upside down for a long time!
BRINDA K. RANA
"Astronaut twins study shows space travel causes premature aging", La Jolla Light, August 1, 2017
There are so many problems to solve on this planet first before we begin to trash other worlds.
E. A. BUCCHIANERI
Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said "Because it is there." Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
speech at Rice University, September 12, 1962
Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Ground Control to Major Tom (ten, nine, eight, seven, six)
Commencing countdown, engines on (five, four, three)
Check ignition and may God's love be with you (two, one, liftoff)
DAVID BOWIE
"Space Oddity"
Human DNA spreading out from gravity's steep well like an oilslick.
WILLIAM GIBSON
Neuromancer
Returning to Earth, that was the challenging part.
BUZZ ALDRIN
"The Dark Side of the Moon", GQ, January 2015
Space can be mapped and crossed and occupied without definable limit; but it can never be conquered. When our race has reached its ultimate achievements, and the stars themselves are scattered no more widely than the seed of Adam, even then we shall still be like ants crawling on the face of the Earth. The ants have covered the world, but have they conquered it -- for what do their countless colonies know of it, or of each other?
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
"We'll Never Conquer Space"
The spice is vital to space travel.
Travel without moving.
ASTRAL PROJECTION
"Dancing Galaxy"
The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must--never for sport.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Time Enough For Love
The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
2001: A Space Odyssey
That's ultimately what space travel was all about, was sending out ships from earth into space. And not just in some, like, space shuttle that's got the foam coming off of it. You need your own glowing, you know, multicolored' space ship.
BECK
"The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton"