Curiosity is the essence of human existence.
I know the stars are my home. I learned about them, needed them for survival in terms of navigation. I know where I am when I look up at the sky. I know where I am when I look up at the Moon; it’s not just some abstract romantic idea, it’s something very real to me. See, I’ve expanded my home.
I’ve been asked about UFOs and I’ve said publicly I thought they were somebody else, some other civilization.
To become an astronaut, someone has to have a dream of his own to do something that he or she has always wanted to do, then commit himself to making that dream come true.
If the guidance failed or started to stray or went somewhere we didn’t like or the ground didn’t like, I could flip a switch, and I could control seven, over seven and a half million pounds of thrust with this handle and fly the thing to the Moon myself.
Another hundred years may pass before we understand the true significance of Apollo. Lunar exploration was not the equivalent of an American pyramid, some idle monument to technology, but more of a Rosetta stone, a key to unlocking dreams as yet undreamed.
Curiosity is the essence of human existence and exploration has been part of humankind for a long time. The exploration of space, like the exploration of life, if you will, is a risk. We’ve got to be willing to take it.
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.
I’m quite disappointed that I’m still the last man on the moon.
We will certainly see teachers, journalists, artists and poets in space. Whatever it takes to the be the best is what it will take to get you into space.
Curiosity is the essence of human existence. ‘Who are we? Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?’ I don’t know. I don’t have any answers to those questions. I don’t know what’s over there around the corner. But I want to find out.
We leave as we came and, god willing, as we shall return, with peace, and hope for all mankind.
Am I willing to go to Mars? Yes, but I’m not willing to spend nine months getting there, then wait 18 more months until the planets align to come home.
The mass gross absence of sound in space is more than just silence.
I hold the world speed record downhill, in a Rover. I think it was 17 kilometers per hour, downhill.
Neil Armstrong was probably one of the most human guys I’ve ever known in my life.
Nobody can take those footsteps I made on the surface of the moon away from me.