American - Scientist | February 24, 1961 -
It's part of the human character to want to know what's over the next hill, to want to know what's beyond.
Ellen Stofan
CharacterKnowWantHillBeyond
'The Martian' may be fiction, but at NASA, we are working to make it a reality.
RealityNASAFictionMayWorking
We actually look to the scientific community to kind of come back to NASA and tell us what the priorities should be. And then at NASA, we try to look within our budget and say, 'What can we accommodate, and what are the most important things for the nation?'
CommunityPrioritiesLookBackNASA
As a card-carrying space nerd and NASA's chief scientist, I love space movies, from 'Star Trek' to 'Star Wars' to my all-time favorite - 'The Dish', an Australian comedy that celebrates that first moment when Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the surface of our moon.
LoveMomentSpaceMoonComedyDown
One of the big things about space exploration is that it is as expensive as it is complicated, and you need all the countries of the world to help if you want to accomplish big goals.
GoalsSpaceWorldHelpYouWant
What we expect to find, certainly in our own solar system, are probably simple single or multiple-cell forms of life. To get to intelligent life takes stability of conditions over huge, long periods of time.
LifeTimeSimpleLongFindSolar
I always like to say just think you were a doctor with only one patient. You might understand how that person gets sick, how they get better, but you understand nothing about the progression of disease or how humans in general get ill. Now take an Earth scientist: you only have one planet to study.
DoctorSickThinkBetterYouEarth
Humans can actually read a landscape, go through a lot of rocks - crack them open, throw them, pick up the next one. Rovers are great - they do amazing science - but it is a lot more tedious process; they go much less far than a human can cover in a day.
ScienceGreatDayAmazingLandscape
We like to talk about pioneering Mars rather than just exploring Mars, because once we get to Mars, we will set up some sort of permanent presence.
WillTalkExploringMarsPermanent
So many people I talk to who work in technology, you ask them, 'What got you interested in science?' and those from my generation say, 'The Apollo landings.'
WorkTechnologySciencePeopleYou
Being able to have a laboratory on Mars, being able to have some sort of sustained human presence on Mars in the future, I think, is critically important for science.
FutureScienceThinkImportantHuman
If you think of the Apollo capsule coming into Earth with a parachute, the Mars atmosphere is just so thin, you've got to find some way of slowing yourself down really rapidly.
YourselfThinkYouFindDownEarth
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Ellen Stofan quotes