“I thought the attractions of being an astronaut were actually, not so much the Moon, but flying in a completely new medium.”

“I thought the attractions of being an astronaut were actually, not so much the Moon, but flying in a completely new medium.”

“Neil Armstrong was no Christopher Columbus. In most respects, he was better. Unlike the famous fifteenth century seafarer, Armstrong knew where he landed. He also spent his time in public service, not in jail, and his passing was marked by world-wide encomiums. He ended his days as a celebrated explorer rather than a royal inconvenience.”

“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.”

“In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.”

“Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.”

“All in all, for someone who was immersed in, fascinated by, and dedicated to flight, I was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that had brought me along one generation late. I had missed all the great times and adventures in flight.”

“Research is creating new knowledge.”

“Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next 10.”

“Geologists have a saying - rocks remember.”

“I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks, but for the ledger of our daily work.”

“I thought the attractions of being an astronaut were actually, not so much the Moon, but flying in a completely new medium.”