When you're in a spacecraft, you need to know what things you can touch and what things you shouldn't touch!
The big companies are the private industry. But they're faced with a short-term need to show a profit in short-term.
Not everyone will understand this need for America to lead the world in space.
Let's not spend resources that we don't need to be sending astronauts back to the moon. Let's not spend expensive resources on bringing people who have reached Mars back again. Prepare them to become a growing colony.
For every winner, there's a loser. And that person didn't really need to lose. They just didn't understand the game plan.
We need to begin thinking about building permanence on the Red Planet, not just have voyagers do some experiments, plant a flag and claim success. Having them go there, repeat this, in my view, is dim-witted. Why not stay there?
A family needs to work as a team, supporting each other's individual aims and aspirations.
We need to have people up there who can communicate what it feels like, not just pilots and engineers.
The energy varies with the square of the velocity, so if you need five times the velocity, that's 25 times the energy.
Heavy lifting doesn't need to be heavy spending if we do the job right.
The government needs a role in carrying out exploration. They will be leading the development of the engines that are needed, and the private sector will take advantage of those.
You need propellants to accelerate toward Mars, then to decelerate at Mars, again to re-accelerate from Mars to Earth, and finally to decelerate back at Earth. Accordingly, the mass of these required propellants, in short, drives our need for innovative launch vehicles.
Having walked on the Moon, I know something about what we need to explore, really explore, in space.
I feel we need to remind the world about the Apollo missions and that we can still do impossible things.
We need the next generation to be motivated and to push technological boundaries, to seek out new innovations.
There's a need for accepting responsibility - for a person's life and making choices that are not just ones for immediate short-term comfort. You need to make an investment, and the investment is in health and education.