astronauts-from-the-united-states

"It was amazing beautiful seeing the earth from that vantage point," Epps said. "But for me, one of the big things is that now I want to see trees, I want to see people, I want to touch things and experience things here on Earth more than I did before. And it's just made me appreciate things I think just a little bit more and the simple things, not the big things but the simple things in life that make me happy."

"I’m still in awe of seeing the Earth from the vantage point we had from the Dragon vehicle as we were approaching the International Space Station, You can see it in pictures, you can even dream about those pictures, but there’s just something that happens when you see it with your own eyes."

"I figured that I’d become a great scientist and then maybe, maybe, maybe in the future I’ll be able to apply, if I establish myself well enough"

"Even just the weight of your head and trying to hold it up and some of the muscle pains that you'll have because you haven't held your head up in what eight months almost for us"

"I think they need to pursue their dreams," Epps said. "You may not make it to space, but will you make it way further than if you had never pursued that dream."

"It just looks otherworldly to me … like, what you would see if you were on the moon."

"So after my parents went to bed, I'd go grab the phone and I'd wire it up and I’d call my boyfriend. Then I’d unhook it and take it back downstairs,"

"You eat just about any type of food that you want,” Higginbotham said. “So my commander, who was a big shrimp guy, had shrimp cocktail at every single meal — breakfast, lunch and dinner."

"You are competing with some wicked smart people from all over the world, literally all over the world. So that is like… the floor as you're going in. Just be very, very mindful of your education."

"It feels like there's an elephant sitting on your chest,” she said. “So breathing out is very labored. You have to be very deliberate about exhaling and that lasts for about 45 seconds to a minute. And then after that, you have left earth's atmosphere and you're in space"

"And my parents, for the life of them, could not figure out why the phone bill was so high. I finally told my mother, like five years ago, that it was me who did that."

"That wasn’t my best engineering moment"

"That's because you have seven million pounds of thrust that is lifting you off the launch pad"

"And what that means is that we go around the world one time every 90 minutes. And in that 90 minutes, we get to see one sunrise, about 45 minutes and then a sunset. So if you were just to plaster yourself at the window for a full day, you would see 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets. Pretty cool"

"I was very fortunate to have been able to study engineering and to find my way to NASA, to join the NASA astronaut class of 1996."

"I am of course excited to be included among the group and look forward to whoever the first woman is and the women who follow as part of the Artemis program to continue our studies of the moon, continue to descend down to the surface in a lander and hopefully to build a lunar base there on the moon and continue our journey from the Gateway orbiting laboratory."

"Back at home, we all have a lot of work to do. But from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world."

"I truly want us to live in a world 50 or 100 years from now where people are jumping in their rockets like the Jetsons and there are families bouncing around on the moon with their kid in a spacesuit. … I also think if we are going to live in that world, we better conquer childhood cancer along the way."

""I believe failure can be caused by lack of focus on that mission, or allowing too many distractions into your life"."

"I asked my crew to be creative, to think about everything that could go wrong during the mission that no one has thought about yet and bring it to the attention of the flight control team"

"Informal learning is more difficult because you don’t always know what you need to know"

""Sometimes a woman needs to show her competence before the guys “accept” her and trust her"."

"" Set a “mission” for yourself and write it somewhere where you will see it daily"."

""I also should credit all the women pilots before me, including the Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII and the Mercury 13 women who passed the difficult astronaut exams in the early 1960s"."

""A leader must be collaborative and competent, and your team won’t care if you are a man or a woman"."

""It’s hard for the astronauts to meet everybody because we have responsibilities in the office and families we need to see, so we try to spread out"."

"Travel is always surprising. You can never read enough about a destination in a book to understand or to see what it's like until you get there. So, I tend to reserve my judgment about places because every time I've gone to different places I've been surprised. And I love that."

"India looks like a jewel from Space."

"Sometimes you are lucky enough in life to meet someone who changes you for the better"

"The past is constantly affecting the present, and there are few places that illustrate this fact better than Rome."

"We all have a role to play in ensuring equality and justice for all our brothers and sisters"

"The big secret is that academia doesn’t measure all the qualities of what makes a great contributor to society, such as in engineering. We only judge a small subset."

"The best leaders recognize the talents of each individual and bring those talents out of those people so they can apply them to problems."

"Just being prepared is the best you can expect from yourself."

"You can increase diversity in the workplace by looking beyond the select few schools deemed 'elite'"

"I don't think we would have gotten that across the finish line without all of her hard work. I think without her it wouldn't have happened, so she deserves a ton of credit for that."

"Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do...He’s slashed and burned the federal government to make room for a giant tax cut for billionaires like himself. I’ve sworn an oath to this country, I’ve flown in combat, I served in the Navy for 25 years. It appears to me the oath that Elon Musk stands by is the oath to billionaires to make their lives easier, not the American people, not veterans. He’s not a serious guy. He should go back to building rockets."

"We salute Commander Mark Kelly and his contributions to NASA as an extremely accomplished member of the astronaut corps and the final commander of the space shuttle Endeavour. . . . We deeply respect his achievements and his decision to focus on his family. We continue to send out our thoughts and prayers to Mark and his wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, as she makes a remarkable recovery. We know that Mark will continue to do great things for his country no matter what he chooses to do next."

"I think we (NASA) need to do a better job of getting the message out about what life is really like up here (from space). It's pretty spectacular."

"I'm going to do whatever I can to show how thankful I am for my crewmates. It's wonderful having all of these folks up here (in International Space Station). We haven't been up here together that long, but wow it sure has been wonderful already."

"Even though we'll be up here (in International Space Station) this year (2021), we have our space family. So I think we're going to create some of our own traditions and we'll be able to talk to our family on the ground."

"I was inspired to become an astronaut after watching the Apollo 11 moon landing as an eight-year-old kid. We need to get kids interested in space and in science and math in general."

"I like to participate in these kinds of things, so hopefully, we can change one life to motivate a kid to stimulate them to study in science and engineering."

"I am certain, if everyone could see the Earth floating just outside their windows, every day would be #EarthDay There are few things more fragile or more beautiful than Earth, let’s work together today and everyday to protect our home."

"I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of, let's say 100,000 miles, their outlook would be fundamentally changed. The all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument suddenly silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied. I am not a naïve man. I don’t believe that a glance from 100,000 miles would cause a Prime Minister to scurry back to his parliament with a disarmament plan, but I do think it would plant a seed that ultimately could grow into such concrete action."

"Each spring and summer, as the lake gets drier and as more high-pressure aircraft tires abuse it, surface cracks and blemishes appear, so by late autumn the lake bed appears rough and "ruined". Then come the winter rains, sparingly, but providing enough water to allow a couple of inches to accumulate on the lake bed and to be blown back and forth by the omnipresent wind. By early spring, the newly dried surface reappears, as silky as a baby's bottom, ready to take another year's traffic smoothly and safely."

"I have always loved science museums in particular—the interactive hands-on museums ... They just exude creativity."

"Dear Mr. [Al] Gore: I am a former astronaut, Cornell professor, physics faculty member at Princeton University and visiting faculty member in technology assessment at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, I was Mo Udall’s energy advisor and speechwriter during his 1975 Presidential campaign, author, AAAS Fellow, World Innovation Foundation Fellow, NASA group achievement award recipient, and founder of the New Energy Movement.You have asked the public to address the important question, “How can we reverse global climate change?” I agree that taking on that task is critical for our collective survival. You have also stated that we must freeze and drastically reduce our carbon emissions. I agree.The most promising answer to your question is surprisingly simple and can be summed up in two words: new energy. My experience finds that serious discussion of new energy is still politically incorrect in mainstream circles, which is appalling. Delays in implementing life-saving innovation will be at our collective risk and peril. The urgency for action in these times is unprecedented in the human journey. Quantum leaps in energy innovation, which some of us in the scientific community are aware of, can provide the needed solution, hopefully in time to avert global disaster."

"Nuclear power. Carbon sequestration at coal plants. Ethanol-from-corn. Other kinds of biofuels. Carbon cap-and-trading. Hybrid cars. Conventional electric cars. Air cars. Gas-turbine micropower. Efficient powerplants. Hydrogen economy. Hydro-power. Geothermal energy. Solar. Wind. Tides. Waves. Ocean thermal gradients.Which one(s) of these will solve our climate crisis and give us a large and lasting contribution to energy sustainability? The sobering answer to any truthful inquiry, I am sorry to say, is none of the above."

"Between 2002 and 2006, I taught a course in the Masters program in Transformational Psychology at the University of Philosophical Research in Los Angeles. Part of the intent of the course was to embrace all four cultures of the Phoenix. The title of the course was Science, Ecology, Ethics and Consciousness. The attendance was low, but the students that did attend were among the most aware and sentient beings I have ever met. They began to understand how important all four cultures were for our future, and if we leave out any of these qualities and beliefs, or specialize too much in any one, we will box ourselves in.[…] I believe that the world needs to come together in a blend from the four cultures of the Phoenix, but only the “Spiritualists” of consciousness scientists can provide lasting solutions. All other groups [Truth-Seekers, Deep Ecologists, and Pragmatists] simply do not have the awareness to get there, but they have an important role to play in presenting the depth of our problems."