Rocket Science Quotes

“I'm even going to electrolyze my urine. That'll make for a pleasant smell in the trailer.

If I survive this, I'll tell people I was pissing rocket fuel.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“This is the team. We're trying to go to the moon. If you can't put someone up, please don't put them down.”
― NASA

“It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”
― John Drury Clark, Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants

“A troubled mind can make rocket science out of nearly anything.”
― Millie Florence, Lydia Green Of Mulberry Glen

“We can build rockets to explore outer space and enhance the quality of life on Earth, or we can use them to destroy other nations.”
― Jacque Fresco, The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty & War

“Being a rocket scientist isn’t all that smart when you could work in finance.”
― A.D. Aliwat, Alpha

“Goddard was not personally religious; his most immediate and consistent motivation was a desire for recognition as the founding genius of rocket science.”
― Kendrick Oliver, To Touch the Face of God: The Sacred, the Profane, and the American Space Program, 1957–1975

“But when launches were delayed, everything moved into a strange sort of limbo...a launch that was supposed to have gone up one morning but wouldn't attempt again until the next made us all feel we were living in a day that didn't count, a day between parentheses.”
― Margaret Lazarus Dean, The Time It Takes to Fall

“The deeper the journey into inner space, the further the possibilities in outer space.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones, Giants At Play: Finding Wisdom, Courage, And Acceptance To Encounter Your Destiny

“Three hundred years ago mathematicians were learning to break the cannonball's rise and fall into stairsteps of range and height, Δx and Δy, allowing them to grow smaller and smaller, approaching zero as armies of eternally shrinking midgets galloped upstairs and down again, the patter of their diminishing feet growing finer, smoothing out into continuous sound. This analytic legacy has been handed down intact–it brought the technicians at Peenemünde to peer at the Askania films of Rocket flights, frame by frame, Δx by Δy, flightless themselves . . . film and calculus, both pornographies of flight.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“Even rocket science ain't rocket science nowadays. Not compared to negotiating a relationship anyway. Now why don't they teach you the equations for THAT at college eh? "Oh, just close your eyes, and aim in the general direction. If you get into trouble just press this button which will lower a bottle of The Macallan into your hand and eject your brain clean out of your skull. You'll parachute safely back to earth and definitely will not end up in a screaming mass of smoking hot twisted metal on a hillside somewhere.”
― Andre the BFG

“They were assembling a rocket there.

It was a big rocket.

It all more or less made sense. There was no cargo too big to be barged up the Columbia River and then trucked the last few miles to Moses Lake. There was no airplane that couldn’t be accommodated by that runway. There was no object that the aerospace machine shops of the Seattle area couldn’t build. And from this latitude, the same as Baikonur, a well-worn and understood flight plan could take payloads to Izzy.

A mere four days later, Doob stood in the bed of a rusty pickup truck with a random assortment of space rednecks, hoisting a longnecked beer bottle into the sky in emulation of the rocket lifting off from the pad. They all hooted and screamed as they watched it arc gracefully downrange and take off in the general direction of Boise. And the next morning, when they had all sobered up, they got busy building another rocket.”
― Neal Stephenson, Seveneves

“Rocket science is not really rocket science.”
― Haresh Sippy

“Sad they are throwing out earth’s resources into outer space in the name of science. And poor people get enchanted with those shitty photographs of Mars and Dark holes.”
― Saroj Aryal

“We cannot become a successful race of space explorers with traditional rocket and jet propulsion drive - we need to come up with a cooler and lasting alternative.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Revolution Indomable

“There are, after all, some chemicals that explode shatteringly, some that flame ravenously, some that corrode hellishly, some that poison sneakily, and some that stink stenchily. As far as I know, though, only liquid rocket fuels have all these delightful properties combined into one delectable whole.”
― Isaac Asimov

“It’s not rocket surgery”
― Neil Mach, The Patternmaker and the Tide

“Space Exploration Ethics 101

If we can colonize Mars, we can heal the Earth. But that's not the point here. The point is, we gotta explore space just like we gotta explore anything unknown - but we must do so as humble scientists, not as steroid-pumped, illegitimate offspring of musky retards like Columbus.

We gotta explore space just like we explore the Arctic. Humankind has several outposts in the Arctic, dedicated solely to research - our endeavors into other planets oughta be exactly like that. Otherwise, what starts out as space exploration will soon turn into space imperialism, and will do to other planets what white terrorists have been doing to the indegenous people on earth for ages.

Therefore, focus on space exploration, not on space colonization. Let me put this into perspective. NASA, ISRO, CNSA, ESA, KARI, JAXA (and more) - these represent the real democratic aspirations of humankind's endeavors of curiosity into space, whereas SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic these are the new-age posterboys of space imperialism.

All I say is this, O Brave Explorers of Space - your mission is to explore the universe to facilitate human welfare, not to be some retarded billionaire's backboneless underwear. Beware, I repeat - space exploration doesn't turn into space imperialism!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth

“Beware, space exploration doesn't turn into space imperialism!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth

“O Brave Explorers of Space - your mission is to explore the universe to facilitate human welfare, not to be some retarded billionaire's backboneless underwear.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth

“NASA, ISRO, CNSA, ESA, KARI, JAXA (and more) - these represent the real democratic aspirations of humankind's endeavors of curiosity into space, whereas SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic these are the new-age posterboys of space imperialism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth

“When one gives up on possibility or prospects of personal growth aligning with Nation’s, one tends to become coercive to attain growth OR destructive to bring the rest down including the Nation.”
― Sandeep Sahajpal, The Twelfth Preamble: To all the authors to be!