"Us reaching the moon convinced Gorbachev and other leaders that the Soviet Union couldn't compete with the U.S., so they revised their agenda. But people have short memories."

"I shot down two airplanes in Korea, so I wasn't a slouch."

"I think we need to move to the moons of Mars and learn how to control robots that are on the "surface". It's not the impatient way of getting there, but Mars has been there a long time."

"There's no guarantee that the United States will be around 200 years from now."

"Human rights problems will always exist for years to come, but maybe they'll lessen somewhat."

"I don't think we're going to build a 50-person spacecraft or a 100-person spacecraft."

"Save the taxpayer's money by canceling the Ares 1 and V."

"When the time comes to start building deep space transports and refueling rocket tankers, it will be the commercial industry that steps up, not another government-owned, government-managed enterprise."

"Landing in the ocean and waiting for the Navy to come alongside and haul you out of the drink is what space capsules require. And after the capsule is recovered, it would take weeks for the ship to return to port."

"One of the major problems with long-term deep space human flight is the requirement for radiation shielding."

"Mars has a bit of air pressure; maybe we can build up that atmosphere to be a bit more accommodating to humans."

"I'm sure that there are places in the deserts in Australia that could be similar to where we might want to go on Mars."

"My father's an early aviator, and my first flight was with him at age two. Now, despite the fact that I got sick on the flight, I still enjoyed it, I believe."

"We could have human intelligence in orbit around Mars, building things there."

"Look at what Silicon Valley has done - the advance of computers."

"In Mars, we've been given a wonderful set of moons... where we can send continuous numbers of people."

"I grew up in a country that I thought was special. And it was."

"'Anthony and the Magic Picture Frame' tells it like it really was in America's early space program - the adventure, the risks, and the rewards."

"Trips to Mars, the Moon, even orbit, will require that we provide astrotourists with as many comforts from home as possible, including paying each other."

"If you want poets in space, you'll have to wait."

"You can never tell when a commercial space venture will suddenly become viable."

"Like actors and writers who are on and off again in terms of employment, I had a very unstructured life."

"You are not going to change the minds of people who are looking for attention."

"I do celebrity ski races all over the world."

"Growing up, I was fascinated with Buck Rogers' airplanes. As I began to mature in World War II, it became jets and rocket planes. But it was always in the air."

"I realize that my life is not the common ordinary person."

"I inherited depression from my mother's side of the family."

"I am not sure about Bill Nelson. I haven't heard him say, 'Let's junk the NASA plan to send humans to the moon.' He's not about to say that. That would not be very popular."

"Russia perhaps is still entertaining the possibility that the moons of Mars might have access to ice or water."

"Astronauts working for the government will always need to be either pilots or mission specialists. Those who want to be pilots should have military experience - ideally, a test pilot background."

"As a student, I wrote English reports on science fiction."

"Unfortunately, kids are led to believe things are easier to achieve than they really are."

"I want to keep on the move, keep stimulated and challenged."

"Anything we can do in the near future that begins to stimulate the interest of people - seeing somebody down the street have an opportunity to go into space - buoys up the whole neighborhood."

"By venturing into space, we improve life for everyone here on Earth - scientific advances and innovations that come from this kind of research create products we use in our daily lives."

"In space, you don't get that much noise. Noise doesn't propagate in a vacuum."

"The society of life on Mars, or the challenge of making Mars more livable, will have significant benefits on our attempts to modify and change in some ways the environment here on Earth."

"I think the climate has been changing for billions of years."

"The big companies are the private industry. But they're faced with a short-term need to show a profit in short-term."

"There are many people talking about access to space and, 'How can we make that cheaper? How can we turn that into a Southwest Airlines versus the big airlines?'"

"Most people never believed in the real possibility of going to the moon, and neither did I until I was in my twenties."

"I remember it was hard to believe that I was taking a step onto the lunar surface."

"The decision to go to the moon is now appreciated and associated with President Kennedy's speech, but somebody else had told him it was a good idea. It turned out to be a good commitment, but it was a unique situation."

"When you're in a spacecraft, you need to know what things you can touch and what things you shouldn't touch!"

"Can you imagine, in 2030, taking a space cruise on the very ship that carried the first human beings to Mars? I can't believe that people wouldn't line up for that possibility."

"Somebody would think I was trying to get favored treatment because my ancestors had the name Moon. And that's a joke."

"Not everyone will understand this need for America to lead the world in space."

"What's aero braking? That's a way to use the gravity and upper atmosphere of Earth to sling shot a ship out either deeper into space, or slow it down to be 'captured' by Earth's gravity."

"Mars has been flown by, orbited, smacked into, radar inspected, and rocketed onto, as well as bounced upon, rolled over, shoveled, drilled into, baked, and even laser blasted."

"There were about six years when there was not one American who went into space. We shouldn't do that again."