Top 1200 Space Shuttle Challenger Quotes & Sayings

Explore popular Space Shuttle Challenger quotes.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
Manned spaceflight has lost its glamour - understandably so, because it hardly seems inspiring, 40 years after Apollo, for astronauts merely to circle the Earth in the space shuttle and the International Space Station.
My job in space will be to observe and write a journal. I am also going to be teaching a class for students on earth about life in space and on the space shuttle and conducting experiments.
On my second space walk, I was riding the Canadarm, heading down toward the payload bay of the space shuttle, and I could see the space shuttle highlighted against the Earth in the background, and there was this black, infinite, hostile void of space. I remember looking down at the Earth and thinking, "Beneath me is a 4½-billion-year-old planet, upon which the entire history of the human species has taken place." That was an incredibly humbling moment, and I had a bit of an epiphany.
You know something I could really do without? The Space Shuttle. ... It's irresponsible. The last thing we should be doing is sending our grotesquely distorted DNA out into space.
I asked someone once why he liked Jean-Michel's work and why it was being singled out for acclaim, and he said, 'Because it looks like art.' But then again, art doesn't always look like art at first. The way the space shuttle that lifts off doesn't much resemble the space shuttle as it lands.
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. — © Ronald Reagan
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives.
Instead of planning the retirement of the Space Shuttle program, America should be preparing the shuttles for their next step in space: evolving, not shutting them down and laying off thousands of people.
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.
When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.
I was a flight engineer on my second flight, which is the most senior position a non-American can have aboard the shuttle. We're the cockpit crew. We fly the vehicle up to space, dock the vehicle to the space station, undock it at the end of the mission, and return it to the ground.
We have lost one shuttle for every 57 flights and that is not a good ratio. I do believe we need to continue space flights, but maybe we can follow the example of the Russians and use unmanned vehicles to transport hardware into space.
Ironically, it is only when disaster strikes that the shuttle makes the headlines. Its routine flights attracted less media interest than unmanned probes to the planets or the images from the Hubble Telescope. The fate of Columbia (like that of Challenger in 1986) reminded us that space is still a hazardous environment.
My daughter just thinks that all moms fly the Space Shuttle
Time is the warp and matter the weft of the woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurling shuttle.
The thing I remember most about space is the view from the spacewalk. When I was inside the space shuttle and looking through the window, you can see the earth and the stars, and it's very beautiful, but it's like looking at an aquarium, sort of. When you go outside and spacewalk, you become a scuba diver.
I can't imagine anywhere I'd rather be than outside the space shuttle in my space suit next to the Hubble Space Telescope. — © John M. Grunsfeld
I can't imagine anywhere I'd rather be than outside the space shuttle in my space suit next to the Hubble Space Telescope.
The only reason Hubble works is because we have a space shuttle.
The view of earth is spectacular from space. Most people imagine that when astronauts look out the window of the shuttle they see the whole earth like that big blue marble that was made famous by the flights that went to the moon. But the shuttle is much, much closer than those astronauts were. So we don't see the whole planet, the whole ball at once, we just see parts of it.
Half of one per cent of the U.S. budget is space-related stuff. In Canada, we spend more on dog foodScreen Shot 2015-08-19 at 2.39.35 PM. Space flight is intrinsically international and very modern. It's like a co-op. Every country provides services. In Canada, we have a focus on robotics in the shuttle and space station. In exchange, we get research time for our scientists and astronauts' flights. Our contribution is as a junior partner.
In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded and crashed down to Earth less than two minutes after takeoff. The cause of that crash, it turned out, was an inexpensive rubber O-ring in the booster rocket that had frozen on the launchpad the night before and failed catastrophically moments after takeoff.
NASA is developing space taxis to shuttle astronauts to the International Space Station. And just like New York taxis, they're all going to be driven by aliens.
Modern neuroimaging is like asking an astronaut in the space shuttle to look out the window and judge how America is doing.
The Space Shuttle will stop directly below the Space Station and Sergei and I will be looking out two different windows looking straight down at the Space Shuttle.
NASA asked me to create meals for the space shuttle. Thai chicken was the favorite. I flew in a fake space shuttle, but I have no desire to go into space after seeing the toilet.
It's pretty amazing to me that we have had a space shuttle program that's lasted for 30 years - for one space shuttle. That's quite an achievement.
The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident.
There is just no way that I can understand in God's green earth that an airline could undertake with its normal procedures the operation of the Space Shuttle. . . . You don't put parachutes on airliners because the margin of safety is built into the machine. The 727 airplanes we fly are proven vehicles with levels of safety and redundancy built in. The shuttle is a hand-made piece of experimental gear.
Two subsequent incidents of import established CNN: the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, which CNN was the only network to cover as it happened, and the 1991 Gulf War, which CNN chronicled round the clock from a proximity as irresistible as it was alarming, bomb blasts and gunfire lighting up TV screens from coast to coast.
[On Richard P. Feynman's live demonstration of the rigidity of the O-rings when cold that doomed the space shuttle Challenger, killing seven astronauts:] The public saw with their own eyes how science is done, how a great scientist thinks with his hands, how nature gives a clear answer when a scientist asks her a clear question.
New Rule: Since our new national position on science is, "Screw it, we prefer witchcraft," let's not just retire the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Let's drive it to one of the five stupidest States and have the locals beat it with sticks. Putting it in a museum is too dangerous. Someone could steal it, fly it into space and notice we revolve around the sun.
When I was a kid, I was a bit of a space geek. I loved the space program and all things NASA. I would read books about our solar system; I had pictures of the Space Shuttle on my bedroom wall. And yes, I even went to Space Camp.
I witnessed the building of the Space Shuttle Columbia, the first orbiter to be launched into space.
When I was in kindergarten, I remember looking at picture books of the space shuttle.
I have a blue 2010 Dodge Challenger SRT, the first car I ever bought. I didn't want it to just be a regular Challenger. I wanted it to be different. So I sent it out to Richard Petty's garage in North Carolina, completely tricked it out - a one-of-a-kind built for me and we changed the name of it from 'Challenger' to 'Champion.'
It's very sad that there's going to be a hiatus in manned space flight from the U.S. The Shuttle was a fantastic, hugely complex vehicle. It was inevitable it would come to an end, but this is the opportunity for the commercial world to get involved. As the Shuttle era ends, another window of opportunity opens.
No, I think most astronauts recognize that the space shuttle program is very high-risk, and are prepared for accidents.
We have played a critical role in meeting the new safety standards. The Canadian space industry contributed new tools that make the inspection of the space shuttle possible.
When Russians were having troubles, the Space Shuttle supported the Space Station Mir bringing up much needed supplies and replacements, critical spares, really. That they were able to keep their space station going for much longer than they would have without us. So, I think that shows the value of international cooperation.
The launch of a space shuttle can still make you weep with amazement and wonder, if you happen to be watching it.
The Shuttle is to space flight what Lindbergh was to commercial aviation.
Then during the mission itself, I used the space shuttle's robot arm to release a satellite into orbit. — © Sally Ride
Then during the mission itself, I used the space shuttle's robot arm to release a satellite into orbit.
I think the Space Shuttle is worth one billion dollars a launch. I think that it is worth two billion dollars for what it does. I think the Shuttle is worth it for the work it does.
They didn’t tell me I was going into space until after they locked the shuttle doors and started counting down.
After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the things that had gone wrong.
The first news event I understood as a small child was the loss of the space shuttle Challenger, which President Reagan eloquently mourned from the Oval that evening.
When I was in high school we had the first shuttle launch, and it reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the space program. I was in awe of the space shuttle as such a tremendous machine taking people into space. It seemed like such a wonderful thing that I wanted to be a part of.
The space shuttle has been a fantastic vehicle. It is unlike any other thing that we've ever built. Its capabilities have carried several hundred people into space.
You can't get on my level. you gon' need a space shuttle or a ladder; that's forever.
Describing the Internet as the Network of Networks is like calling the Space Shuttle, a thing that flies.
Chernobyl happened in April of 1986. A few months earlier, in January 1986, the Challenger space shuttle exploded. It did not have the impact on the environment and the amount of lives that Chernobyl did, but it was the result of the same exact problem: a failure of a lot of people and institutions over a long period of time.
To call a Christian a theist is roughly equivalent to calling the space shuttle Atlantis a glider. — © R. C. Sproul
To call a Christian a theist is roughly equivalent to calling the space shuttle Atlantis a glider.
I always admired the U.S. as the country of the space shuttle, of technological achievement.
I think both the space shuttle program and the International Space Station program have not really lived up to their expectations.
That was in 1994, July, 1994, and I can remember that like it was yesterday too because it was the culmination of a childhood dream to finally be laying on the launch pad inside a space shuttle and getting ready to be launched into space. The impression of going into a space shuttle is that it looks like a brand new simulator. We spend so many hours inside a simulator that everything is very familiar. Every switch, the seats, the way things work, but the vehicle, the actual spacecraft looks brand new because it hasn't been used nearly as much as the simulators.
What an incredibly proud moment as a Canadian to have the Canadian flag on the left shoulder of your space suit, looking at the Canadian logos on the robotic arm in the payload bay of the space shuttle, and there's the Orbiter Boom Sensor System, which was an extension of the Canadarm to inspect the tiles underneath the orbiter. It struck me that there were more Canadian logos in space than any other country's I saw.
Our nation is indeed fortunate that we can still draw on an immense reservoir of courage, character, and fortitude, that we are still blessed with heroes like those of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Man will continue his conquest of space. To reach out for new goals and ever-greater achievements, that is the way we shall commemorate our seven Challenger heroes.
There's a huge amount of pressure on every astronaut, because when you get right down to it, the experiments that are conducted on a space flight, or the satellites that are carried up, the work that's to be done, is important and expensive work, and you are up there for a week or two on a Space Shuttle flight. The country has invested a lot of money in you and your training, and the Space Shuttle and everything that's in it, and you have to do things correctly. You can't make a mistake during that week or two that you're in space.
There's a difference between having a challenger whose name appears on the ballot and that`s pretty much it, versus having a challenger who forces you into uncomfortable positions, says some things about you that makes you defend yourself.
In 2009 I went up on the space shuttle. I was in space for 16 days and docked at the space station for 11 days. The entire crew did five space walks, of which I was involved with three of them. When you're doing a space walk, you always have a buddy with you. It's a very dangerous environment when you're doing a space walk.
The Space Shuttle is the most effective device known to man for destroying dollar bills.
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