Best 60 quotes in «nasa quotes» category

We've undergone a very heavy level of scrutiny by review boards because of Genesis and because of the Columbia accident. . . . It was a cultural shift in NASA, that you're now required to understand all the risks.

You know, back in the '70s — I remember the '70s, we were told there was global cooling. And everyone was told global cooling was a really big problem. And then that faded.

When NASA says they're going into space, they don't mean up and back. They mean orbit.

Discovery first flew in 1984, the third orbiter to join the fleet. It was named for one of the ships commanded by Captain James Cook. Space shuttle Discovery is the most-flown orbiter; today will be its thirty-ninth and final launch. By the end of this mission, it will have flown a total of 365 days in space, making it the most well traveled spacecraft in history. Discovery was the first orbiter to carry a Russian cosmonaut and the first to visit the Russian space station Mir. On that flight, in 1995, Eileen Collins became the first woman to pilot an American spacecraft. Discovery flew twelve of the thirty-eight missions to assemble the International Space Station, and it was responsible for deploying the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. This was perhaps the most far reaching accomplishment of the shuttle program, as Hubble has been called the most important telescope in history and one of the most significant scientific instruments ever invented. It has allowed astronomers to determine the age of the universe, postulate how galaxies form, and confirm the existence of dark energy, among many other discoveries. Astronomers and astrophysicists, when they are asked about the significance of Hubble, will simply say that it has rewritten the astronomy books. In the retirement process, Discovery will be the “vehicle of record,” being kept as intact as possible for future study. Discovery was the return-to-flight orbiter after the loss of Challenger and then again after the loss of Columbia. To me, this gives it a certain feeling of bravery and hope. ‘Don’t worry,’ Discovery seemed to tell us by gamely rolling her snow-white self out to the launchpad. 'Don’t worry, we can still dream of space. We can still leave the earth.’ And then she did.

Although many people, for example, believe the Mars Rover robots are champions of Artificial Intelligence, the robots do not “employ state-of-the-art AI algorithms.” Dey said he learned the distinction while collaborating with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory dedicated to robotic exploration of the solar system. AI algorithms require extensive energy consumption to be computed — something that would quickly put the rover out of action in outer space. “On Mars, while exploring several large craters where sunlight might never reach, the rover has to commute and communicate in an optimized fashion with the least amount of external power source,” he said. “And having the state-of-the-art AI algorithm on such a robot would only drain the power source quicker.” But that doesn’t mean the rover isn’t smart in its own way. “Every ounce of the robot is optimized to perform the best at minimal cost,” he said. “So, next time, if you hear about Mars rover then be aware that it is the hard work and dedication of several intelligent researchers and engineers who had made that machine intelligent enough to do its job.

Histories of the Kennedy Space Center acknowledge without exaggeration that the obstacle posed by the mosquitoes was so serious that NASA quite literally could not have put a man on the moon by Kennedy's "before the decade is out" deadline without the invention of DDT. In this way, the challenges of spaceflight reveal themselves to be distinctly terrestrial.

An invention is a responsibility of the individual, society cannot invent, it can only applaud the invention and inventor.

I am, like you, travelling along a road of absolute uncertainty and chaos. The only truth is that one day, we will all reach the end.

Here is one way to conceptualize NASA's heroic era: in 1961, Kennedy gave his "moon speech" to Congress, charging them to put an American on the moon "before the decade is out." In the eight years that unspooled between Kennedy's speech and Neil Armstrong's first historic bootprint, NASA, a newborn government agency, established sites and campuses in Texas, Florida, Alabama, California, Ohio, Maryland, Mississippi, Virginia, and the District of Columbia; awarded multi-million-dollar contracts and hired four hundred thousand workers; built a fully functioning moon port in a formerly uninhabited swamp; designed and constructed a moonfaring rocket, spacecraft, lunar lander, and space suits; sent astronauts repeatedly into orbit, where they ventured out of their spacecraft on umbilical tethers and practiced rendezvous techniques; sent astronauts to orbit the moon, where they mapped out the best landing sites; all culminating in the final, triumphant moment when they sent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to step out of their lunar module and bounce about on the moon, perfectly safe within their space suits. All of this, start to finish, was accomplished in those eight years.

Hello International Space Station, goodbye civilization.

If someone asked me to sum up what is great about my country, I would probably tell them about Apollo 11, about the four hundred thousand people who worked to make the impossible come true within eight years, about how it changed me to see the space-scarred Columbia capsule in a museum as a child, about how we came in peace for all mankind.

If you want people to think that you are crazy, tell them you have radiation sickness.

I have my own religion. My conception of religion is being to the other fellow what you would like for him to be to you and do what you think is necessary to be the type of man that God could appreciate.

It is through the development of occupational diseases that I have become a critic of the biologically toxic astronomy and space communities.

I will tell you sincerely and without exaggeration that the best part of lunch today at the NASA Ames cafeteria is the urine. It is clear and sweet, though not in the way mountain streams are said to be clear and sweet. More in the way of Karo syrup. The urine has been desalinated by osmotic pressure. Basically it swapped molecules with a concentrated sugar solution. Urine is a salty substance (though less so than the NASA Ames chili), and if you were to drink it in an effort to rehydrate yourself, it would have the opposite effect. But once the salt is taken care of and the distasteful organic molecules have been trapped in an activated charcoal filter, urine is a restorative and surprisingly drinkable lunchtime beverage. I was about to use the word unobjectionable, but that's not accurate. People object. They object a lot.

Mars will not be our new home; it will be our new hotel! Because for a new place to be our own home, we need to see the things we used to see: An autumn lake, a bird singing in the misty morning or even desert camels walking in the sunset!

NASA astronauts have only managed to live continuously on the International Space Station (ISS) for a year and Biosphere 2 on Earth failed at two years of uninterrupted human habitation. Both cases required extracting the sickened people from the toxic environments. At this point it is ludicrous to talk about a permanent manned base on Mars.

NASA's next urgent mission should be to send good poets into space so they can describe what it's really like." --Dangerous by Shannon Hale

Negroes joined their countrymen in recoiling at the horrors Germany Visited upon its Jewish citizens by restricting the type of jobs they were allowed to hold and the businesses they could start, imprisoning them wantonly and depriving them of due process and all citizenship rights, subjecting them to state-sanctioned humiliation and violence, segregating them into ghettos, and ultimately working them to death in slave camps and marking them for extermination. How could an American Negro observe the annihilation happening in Europe without identifying it with their own four-century struggle against deprivation, disenfranchisement, slavery and violence?

Now go to bed, you crazy night owl! You have to be at NASA early in the morning. So they can look for your penis with the Hubble telescope.

On a plaque attached to the NASA deep space probe we [human beings] are described in symbols for the benefit of any aliens who might meet the spacecraft as “bilaterly symmetrical, sexually differentiated bipeds, located on one of the outer spiral arms of the Milky Way, capable of recognising the prime numbers and moved by one extraordinary quality that lasts longer than all our other urges—curiosity.

Now we don't care 'bout rain or shine: when you're in space the weather's fine.

Mnamo mwaka 1957 Rais David Eisenhower wa Marekani (inasemekana) alipewa taarifa usiku mmoja akiwa Washington, D.C., kuhusu chombo cha ajabu kilichoanguka kwenye jangwa la Nevada huko Marekani. Ndani ya chombo kile kulikuwa na ‘aliens’ wawili, nao waliomba kuonana na Eisenhower kuhusu ujumbe waliokuja nao kutoka katika ulimwengu wao. Bila kuchelewa, Eisenhower alipanda ndege usiku huohuo mpaka Texas. Huko alichukua gari hadi kwenye eneo la kijeshi liitwalo Area 51, ambapo ndipo ule ujumbe wa ulimwengu mwingine ulipokuwa umeshikiliwa. Mkutano wa aina yake ulifanyika chini ya ardhi, kati ya Rais Eisenhower na hao viumbe wawili wa anga za mbali, chini ya tafsiri ya wanasayansi wa NASA. Walichotaka ni urafiki na dunia yetu, inayogombewa na dunia nyingi za ‘aliens’, kwa mbadala wa teknolojia kadha wa kadha ambazo sisi hatukuwa nazo. Pande zote mbili zilifikia maafikiano, wao wakitupa teknolojia, sisi tukiwapa uwezo wa kufanya majaribio ya kisayansi kwa binadamu wa dunia nzima. Hivyo kuanzia hapo ‘aliens’ wakawa na uhalali wa kuteka watu katika mazingira ya kutatanisha na kuingilia watu usiku wakiwa wamelala, katika tukio la kiulimwengu wa roho lijulikanalo kama ‘sleep paralysis’. ‘Sleep Paralysis’ ni tukio la ajabu. Mtu anapokuwa amelala mwili wake huonekana kufa ganzi, kiasi kwamba anajihisi hawezi hata kunyanyua mkono. Aghalabu hali hiyo inapotokea maana yake ni kwamba ‘aliens’ wanamchukua huyo mtu, kupitia kwenye paa la nyumba aliyolala, hadi mawinguni katika ndege yao. Ndani ya ndege wanaulaza mwili wa binadamu juu ya kitanda cha upasuaji, na kumfanyia upasuaji, ili kusoma biolojia iliyotumika kuumba wanadamu na kujua kwa nini sisi tuko tofauti na wao. Baada ya hapo wanamrudisha huyo mtu kitandani kwake, ambapo atalala usingizi wa kawaida hadi asubuhi. Atakapoamka hatajua kama alifanyiwa upasuaji. Wapo mamilioni ya watu duniani waliolalamika kutokewa na ‘aliens’, lakini serikali haziwahi kuilithibitisha hilo. Inavyosemekana, teknolojia za ‘aliens’ zinahifadhiwa na Jeshi la Marekani (Pentagon) na shirika la kijasusi la MAJI au MJ12. MJ12 ni watu 12 hatari zaidi duniani, wakiongozwa na mkurugenzi mkuu wa CIA (anayejulikana kama MJ1).

One critic complained to me that "Well, if you are right, we will have to rewrite the textbooks!" As if that were a bad thing ... [But], curiously, some of our most virulent critics are associated with NASA and the government. A NASA employee tells me that this attitude of opposition to impact threats is entrenched in NASA and is only now slowly beginning to change. When it became obvious to NASA decades ago that asteroids and comets are a serious threat, their employees were instructed by top government officials to downplay the risk. The government was concerned that the populace would "panic" over space rocks and demand action, when NASA couldn't do anything about them and didn't want to admit it. Plus, trying to mitigate any impact hazards would have used up funding they wanted to put elsewhere.

People say- 'NASA lies.' I say- 'the moon knows it all. Look at the moon and forget the spinning flat world.

Seriously hairy shit was going down on a regular basis.

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect.

Science, enabled by engineering, empowered by NASA, tells us not only that we are in the universe but that the universe is in us. And for me, that sense of belonging elevates, not denigrates, the ego.

Only since the collapse of the Soviet Union have we learned that the Soviets were in fact developing a moon rocket, known as the N1, in the sixties. All four launch attempts of the N1 ended in explosions. Saturn was the largest rocket in the world, the most complex and powerful ever to fly, and remains so to this day. The fact that it was developed for a peaceful purpose is an exception to every pattern of history, and this is one of the legacies of Apollo.

Space is often compared to our oceans. Throw a stone at the water and the density smothers its propulsion. Skim the stone across the surface and the propulsion is mostly preserved with minimal drag. This kind of approach could work for NASA's mission to Mars.

Space is dangerous. It's what we do here. If you want to play it safe all the time, go join an insurance company.

Thank you, NASA, for keeping watch and realizing that our universe will never be anything but light-years new. I want to understand that, and I am so comforted by the fact that I can't. It only proves that some things won't allow themselves to be understood. They aren't for us to know and there's rapture in that, don't you think? Are you happy there, with your eyes glued to the heavens? You know so much, like why the ocean doesn't fall out of the sky, and that there is no upside down. There is no up.

The moon is considered a relatively easy object to land humans on, everything else is much harder by orders of magnitude. It is the reason why we have not been to Mars and will likely never go there successfully with humans.

There was virtually no aspect of twentieth-century defense technology that had not been touched by the hands and minds of female mathematicians.

The complete Apollo team...directly involves slightly over 400,000 people...Included are some if the country's foremost scientists and engineers. This mobilization of men and resources is unprecedented in history since WWII

The scary thing about the protective properties of dietary intake regarding abnormal human radiation exposures is that NASA has understood this for decades!

This is the second Old Master I have encountered that has the signatures of another artist forged over it. A painting that has been created by another artist entirely. It's like they played mix and match.

To govern a society shared by people of emotion, people of reason, and everybody in between—as well as people who think their actions are shaped by logic but in fact are shaped by feelings or nonempirical philosophies—you need politics.

Until a team of monkeys have made the round trip to Mars and returned in good health, there is no manned mission to Mars.

When it comes to travelling to Mars, we either pursue physical paths and redesign our spacecraft with improved radiation-shielding and staggering fuel-efficiency. Or we cheat a little and bend the space/time continuum to get there.

With an accelerated schedule of launch in just two months, NASA and contractor launch and support teams labor steadily with six-day work weeks by day and night shifts

Together the five orbiters Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour have flown a total of 133 successful missions, an unequaled accomplishment of engineering, management, and political savvy. But it's the two disasters that people remember, that most shape the shuttle's story. The lovely dream of spaceflight I grew up with is marred by the images of Challenger and Columbia breaking apart in the sky, the lost astronauts smiling on hopefully in their portraits, oblivious. Some people took the disasters to mean the entire space program had been a lie, that the dream itself was tainted with our fallibility. But even as a child, I knew it was more complex than that. If we want to see people take risks, we have to be prepared to sometimes see them fail. The story of American spaceflight is a story with many endings, a story of how we have weighed our achievements against our failures.

When you organize extraordinary missions, you attract people of extraordinary talent who might not have been inspired by or attracted to the goal of saving the world from cancer or hunger or pestilence.

Within a year, possibly by next fall," he was saying, "something that has never before been done, will be done. NASA will be sending men to the moon. Think of that. Men who were once in classrooms like this one will leave their footprints on the lunar surface." He paused. I leaned in close against the wall so I could hear him. "That is why you are sitting here tonight, and why you will be coming here in the months ahead. You come to dream dreams. You come to build fantastic castles up in the air. And you come to learn how to build the foundations that make those castles real. When the men who will command that mission were boys your age, no one knew. But in a few months, that's what will happen. So, twenty years from now, what will people say of you? 'No one knew then that this kid Washington Irving High School would grow up to do'...what? What castle will you build?

Even though NASA tries to simulate launch, and we practice in simulators, it's not the same - it's not even close to the same.

After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the things that had gone wrong.

Failiure is not an option.

Every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this.

Every astronaut flew into space for a living. But while NASA has not solved the security problems, I would not put me back into a shuttle - and no other astronaut. The confidence is shaken.

I talked to Katherine Johnson, and I tried to make it weighty by asking things like, "How as a Black woman did you do your work in NASA? They were misogynistic, and I'm sure you got called the n-word." She was just like, "Well, that was the way it was. I just did my job. I wanted to do my job." She was just so humble.