Buzz Aldrin

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.

Bringing an asteroid back to Earth? What's that have to do with space exploration? If we were moving outward from there, and an asteroid is a good stopping point, then fine. But now it's turned into a whole planetary defense exercise at the cost of our outward exploration.

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.

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

We must still think of ourselves as pioneers to understand the importance of space.

'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.

It's time to open the space frontier to citizen explorers.

I think both the space shuttle program and the International Space Station program have not really lived up to their expectations.

Space tourism is a logical outgrowth of the adventure tourist market.

Absolutely the United States should lead in space, for the survival of the United States. It's inspiring for the next generation. If we lose leadership, then we'll be using Chinese capability to inspire Americans.

We should've asked China to be a portion of the space station. We should've worked out ways that we can... just give away the technology that we have that puts things up into space, with cooperation up above the atmosphere that's needed to help each other.

I came to dedicate my life to opening space to the average person and crafting designs for new spaceships that could take us far from home. But since Apollo ended, such travels were only in our collective memory.

Space architectures capable of supporting a permanent human presence on Mars are extraordinarily complex, with many different interdependent systems.

To move forward, what's required is a unified space agenda based on exploration, science, development, commerce, and security.

Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.

By refocusing our space program on Mars for America's future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it's time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface.

The purpose of going to Mars is for humans to first begin to occupy, permanently, another planet in the solar system. The astronauts or pilgrims, whatever you might call them, are going to be very historically unique human beings.

I've led a life of such structured discipline and always had a goal in mind of knowing what I was doing, from West Point to the Air Force combat, MIT, looking for new things to study and get involved in. And then I got into the space program, and how disciplined can you get?