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.
Space architectures capable of supporting a permanent human presence on Mars are extraordinarily complex, with many different interdependent systems.
I participated with great honor in becoming one of the first to land on the moon, and now I am devoting and have devoted many years of my life to enabling Americans to lead international nations to permanence on the planet Mars.
We must still think of ourselves as pioneers to understand the importance of space.
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.
I am excited to think that the development of commercial capabilities to send humans into low Earth orbit will likely result in so many more Earthlings being able to experience the transformative power of space flight.
To appropriately respond to an emergency requires a very clear mind, to cooly analyze what the observations are and how to fix it.
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.
Mars, we know, was once wet and warm. Was it home to life? And what can living and learning to work on its rust-colored surface teach us about the future of our own planet, Earth? Answering those mysteries may hold the key to our future.
Training was very extensive, and we dealt with many recoveries from emergencies, and fortunately, participating and observing and existing through the reality of space was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and it was not marred by unexpected hazards or catastrophes.
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.
Trips to Mars, the Moon, even orbit, will require that we provide astrotourists with as many comforts from home as possible, including paying each other.
You need propellants to accelerate toward Mars, then to decelerate at Mars, again to re-accelerate from Mars to Earth, and finally to decelerate back at Earth. Accordingly, the mass of these required propellants, in short, drives our need for innovative launch vehicles.
There are a lot of people that get interested in something, and they hear about it, and they read about it, and then they watch it happen, and that’s why I had quite an interest in the lottery because you’d interest a lot of people, and then just a few would win a chance to do something.
At the core of the risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve.
The final frontier may be human relationships, one person to another.
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?
When the time comes to start building deep space transports and refueling rocket tankers, it will be the commercial industry that steps up, not another government-owned, government-managed enterprise.
Space is not just going up and coming back down again. Space is getting into orbit and being there, living there, establishing a presence, a permanence.
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.