Gene Cernan

Astronaut

1934-03-14

Quotes by Gene Cernan

• Today, we are on a path of decay. We are seeing the book close on five decades of accomplishment as the leader in human space exploration.

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• The countdown reached ten seconds and I could almost hear an invisible crescendo of stirring background music. 'Anchors aweigh!' Five, four, three, two, one... and we had ignition!

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• People try to typecast astronauts as heroic and superhuman. We're only human beings.

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• If the guidance failed or started to stray or went somewhere we didn't like or the ground didn't like, I could flip a switch, and I could control seven, over seven and a half million pounds of thrust with this handle and fly the thing to the Moon myself.

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• We went into darkness after being in daylight the whole time on the way to the Moon. And then we went into darkness. And we're in the shadow... of the Moon.

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• When you head on out to the Moon, in very short order, and you get a chance to look back at the Earth, that horizon slowly curves around in upon himself, and all of sudden you're looking at something that is very strange, but yet is very, very familiar, because you're beginning to see the Earth evolve.

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• After Apollo 17, America stopped looking towards the next horizon. The United States had become a space-faring nation, but threw it away. We have sacrificed space exploration for space exploitation, which is interesting but scarcely visionary.

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• Some astronauts describe the routine flushing of urine into space, where the freezing temperatures turn the droplets into a cloud of bright, drifting crystals, as being among the most amazing sights they saw on an entire voyage.

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• I walked on the Moon. What can't you do?

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• We leave as we came and, god willing, as we shall return, with peace, and hope for all mankind.

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• NASA has been scattered to the four winds.

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