A Quote by James Van Allen

In a dispassionate comparison of the relative values of human and robotic spaceflight, the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure. But only a tiny number of Earth's six billion inhabitants are direct participants. For the rest of us, the adventure is vicarious and akin to that of watching a science fiction movie. At the end of the day, I ask myself whether the huge national commitment of technical talent to human spaceflight and the ever-present potential for the loss of precious human life are really justifiable.

James Van Allen

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Adventure Ask Billion Commitment Comparison Continuing Day Direct Dispassionate Earth End End Of The Day Ever Fiction Huge Human Human Life Ideology Inhabitants Life Loss Motivation Movie Myself National Number Only Participants Potential Precious Present Really Relative Relative Value Rest Robotic Science Science Fiction Science Fiction Movie Six Spaceflight Surviving Talent Technical The End Of The Day Tiny Us Values Vicarious Watching Whether

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James Van Allen
American - Physicist
September 7, 1914 - August 9, 2006

My position is that it is high time for a calm debate on more fundamental questions. Does human spaceflight continue to serve a compelling cultural purpose and/or our national interest? Or does human spaceflight simply have a life of its own, without a realistic objective that is remotely commensurate with its costs? Or, indeed, is human spaceflight now obsolete?

James Van Allen

Competition-driven innovation and price pressure that commercial practices foster can only make human spaceflight ever more common and U.S. leadership in this domain ever clearer.

Alan Stern

The government will see that human spaceflight is useful - for science and the economy - and inspirational.

Helen Sharman

I don't know that there's ever been a human spaceflight mission that did not have some anomaly.

Jared Isaacman

Congress often covers the exposed crotch of our human spaceflight program with the figleaf of science when it's an obvious lie to justify the pumping of billions of dollars into the belly of an ever-voracious aerospace industrial complex. And yes, of course space is dangerous.

Rick Tumlinson

SpaceX returned human spaceflight to the United States, and no one is close to doing that other than them.

Jared Isaacman

I think we need someone in a responsible political position to have the courage to say, 'Let's terminate human spaceflight.'

James Van Allen

As I'm sure you may know, I'm planning to become a spaceflight participant and have been recently approved to begin my spaceflight training by the Russian space federation having passed the necessary medical and physical tests.

Sarah Brightman

Every type of destruction that human philosophy, human science, human reason, human art, human cunning, human force, and human brutality could bring to bear against this Book, and yet the Bible stands absolutely unshaken today. At times almost all the wise and great of the earth have been pitted against the Bible, and only an obscure few for it. Yet it has stood.

R. A. Torrey

I think the only way that the U.S. human spaceflight program is going to get really revitalized, really put sort of an Apollo level push on it, is if some other country, perhaps China, were to actually have a landed flight to the moon and brought back our American flag and put it in Tiananmen Square.

Heidi Hammel

The real question today is not when human life begins, but, what is the value of human life? The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being. The real question for him and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has a God-given right to be protected by the law - the same right we have.

Ronald Reagan

Spaceflight isn't just about doing experiments, it's about an extension of human culture.

Chris Hadfield

The astronaut corps is a very small part of a very large team that enables human spaceflight.

Anne McClain

The capacity for emotional sobriety belongs to everybody in the human family and leads to a fully human response to the adventure and goodness of the gift of human life.

Thomas Keating

Wherefrom are human values to be derived and how are they to be developed? Human values are born along with human birth. They exist in union. Unfortunately, man today separates himself from human values and yet wants to live as a human being. To recover human values, man has to take the spiritual path.

Sathya Sai Baba

Spaceflight gives us a chance to reflect on the context of our existence. We are reminded that we are human before any of our differences, before all of the lines are drawn that divide us.

Anne McClain

A Quote by James Van Allen

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