And in that moment, I was hit with the realization that this delicate layer of atmosphere is all that protects every living thing on Earth from perishing in the harshness of space.

One word I’d use to describe space is lonely. The only way I’ll board a space shuttle is if I had a babysitter with me. You know, to watch the baby I’ll make with her.

At this point I thought ‘We made it,’ by which I meant ‘We survived.’ I also was acutely aware that my childhood dream of flying into space had just come true.

Then they wondered if there were men in the stars. Why not? And as creation is harmonious, the inhabitants of Sirius ought to be huge, those of Mars middle-sized, those of Venus very small. Unless...

I lay on my back, surprised at how calm and focused I felt, strapped to four and a half million pounds of explosives.

I looked it for shooting stars but fixed ones, and I would try to imagine what kind of life lived in those celestial tidal pools so far from us.

Ideally, the ISS program will just be one more incremental step on an expanding, incredible journal of exploration and understanding, taking us higher and farther.

There is nothing particularly special about that location of the centre of mass. If you were to find yourself at the precise spot that is the centre of mass of the earth-moon system, the only...

dark energy,” described as a cosmic antigravity, as yet totally unknowable. It’s basically all mystery out there – all of it, with just this one sliver of knowable, livable, finite light and life. And did...

He’s seeing the actual Milky Way streaked across the sky. The whole of his entire galaxy, right there in front of him. Billions and billions of stars. Billions and billions of worlds. All of them,...

We did not make ourselves, nor did we fashion a world that could not work without pain, and great pain at that, with a little pleasure, very little, to string us along–a world where all...

The late-afternoon sky, in Paul’s peripheral vision, panoramic and mostly unobstructed, appeared rural or suburban, more indicative of forests and fields and lakes—of nature’s vast connections, through the air and the soil, to more of...

Ah, youth!It was a beautiful night…The moon was out of orbit.The stars were awry.But everything else was exactlyas it should have been.

Earth is a small town with many neighborhoods in a very big universe.

Everyone I have spoken with about working with the Russians in space exploration believes that the United States has learned a great deal from Russia and that Russia has learned a great deal from the...

The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren’t any space aliens. We can’t be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we’re not all there...

We essentially had to build a docking mechanism between the two capsules. We didn’t have to share a lot of data, and we did that at the height of the Cold War, which was pretty...

Have a peculiar passion, audacity and boldness that see farther and further into the outer space.