Spacecraft Quotes
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Being first outside the spacecraft would bring much more responsibility, and I really wasn't looking for that.
Buzz Aldrin
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As far as Russia goes, they've been our partner for a long time now, since the early '90's. So you know, what's that, that's more than 15 years. And there have been times where things were a little tense, a little testy, but by and large, the partnership has been very successful. To give you two examples of that, when the Columbia accident occurred, the Russians supported us with their spacecraft faring our astronauts, including me, to the space station and also supplies.
Leroy Chiao
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The training kicked in and we quickly went through our emergency procedures, I took manual control and I got the spacecraft under control and stopped about 50 meters from the space station. So, the net effect of the failure was that we were actually turning and speeding up towards the space station when we should have been slowing down, so it was quite a dangerous situation. But we got manual control, performed the first manual docking to the station at night. The training pays off. It was just automatic. We had our books out already, we went right to the right procedures and executed them.
Leroy Chiao
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Because we didn't cooperate with China, we gave them motivation to develop their own capability. You know, they developed a very capable rocket system, very capable spacecraft. And if we don't cooperate with them in the future, they're going to develop more capable systems. If we're working together on a highly visible project, there is going to be much less, or there is going to be motivation for each country to not get into a conflict or any kind of tension in the military sense.
Leroy Chiao
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If we're not able to launch our own people and operate our own spacecraft anymore then, you know, space - whether it should be or not, it's seen as like a harbinger of technology. If you can fly people into space, if you can operate into space, then you've got high technology and if you're the leader of that, then you're the leader in technology. If we lose that on a more or less permanent basis, or for a long period of time, my fear is that it will creep into the national psyche in all areas and we as a nation as a whole will kind of be diminished.
Leroy Chiao
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When you're in a spacecraft, you need to know what things you can touch and what things you shouldn't touch!
Buzz Aldrin
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The United States, Russia, and China are the only three countries in the world that can launch astronauts into space. Mostly in the U.S. you see some companies trying to launch private commercial people into space, but nobody's done it yet. The only private vehicle that's made it into space so far is Spaceship 1 in 2004, and that was an effort that was funded by one of the Microsoft founders, and he spent about $20 million to develop this spacecraft to do a sub-orbital flight. And it's not the same as going into orbit, but it was a huge first step.
Leroy Chiao
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I don't think we're going to build a 50-person spacecraft or a 100-person spacecraft.
Buzz Aldrin
