Bravery Comes Along As A Gradual Accumulation

As A Youngster, I Read Of Buck Rogers And Flash Gordon. As A Student, I Wrote English Reports On Science Fiction. And As A Fighter Pilot, I Observed The Selection Of The Mercury Astronauts. All This Was Fascinating, But I Really Didn't Think I Would Ever Be A Part Of It. It Was Only When My Good Friend Ed White Was Selected As A Gemini Astronaut That I Decided To Join Nasa As Part Of The Apollo Program.

We Should Go Boldly Where Man Has Not Gone Before. Fly By The Comets, Visit Asteroids, Visit The Moon Of Mars. There's A Monolith There. A Very Unusual Structure On This Potato Shaped Object That Goes Around Mars Once In Seven Hours. When People Find Out About That They're Going To Say 'who Put That There? Who Put That There?' The Universe Put It There. If You Choose, God Put It There.

I Suggest That Going To Mars Means Permanence On The Planet - A Mission By Which We Are Building Up A Confidence Level To Become A Two-planet Species.

I Don't Think We're Going To Build A 50-person Spacecraft Or A 100-person Spacecraft.

Don't Waste Your Time On Beaming People Up Or Down. Instead, Consider Gravity Waves As Advanced Physics Of The Universe That Could Be Used To Travel Interstellar Distances.