Zitat des Tages über Astronaut:
I worked for some very good people who have helped me along the way and actually enabled me to have the opportunity to be selected to join the Astronaut Corps.
Bringing the astronaut's nightmare to life so vividly is a remarkable accomplishment but Alfonso and Jonas Cuaron want more than just the adrenaline ride - they're feeding our wonder and inviting us to think deeply about profound questions of existence.
Being a leading man... that's like saying, 'I want to be astronaut.' That's not going to happen.
To be one of the world's top space robotic arm operators is a necessary skill for an astronaut, but it doesn't have much carry-over.
Well, for me it really wasn't a case of deciding to be an astronaut.
As an astronaut, when you're getting ready to go out of that hatch, you know that's the pinnacle of both your career and your life. The view completely blows you away. The real challenge is getting past the excitement and getting focused and down to work.
I like acting for now. But after seeing Apollo 13, what I really want to do is to be an astronaut. I'm dying to go to a space camp next summer!
I remember reading about Mae Jemison, that astronaut. That was immensely fantastic to me. This woman went to the moon!
It is an incredible treat and certainly one of the highlights of any astronaut's career to do a spacewalk.
Children often ask me, they say, 'Well, how do you become a fighter pilot, or how do you become an astronaut, or...?' And I say, 'Love what you're doing and do it very well.'
I had done everything I could do as an astronaut, and we have a long line of inexperienced astronauts waiting for their first missions, and so my role really should be to step aside and help them prepare for their missions, rather than to try to get another mission.
Back in the days of Apollo, sending humans to the moon was the only viable way to get the scientific data we wanted. But now, with our computer and robotics technology, there's very little an astronaut can do on Mars that a well-designed rover can't.
I can't think of anything specific growing up that pointed me toward NASA at all. I was interested in the Moon landings just about the same as everyone else of my generation. But I never really thought about being an astronaut or working in space myself.
I wanted to be an astronaut and wanted to go to space camp, but then I found out that I was too short to become an astronaut. My mom really made me believe that if I worked hard enough and if I really wanted to do it, I could do it.
The advice I was given was just to make sure you look out of the window occasionally. It's something no astronaut ever gets tired of doing.
I loved being a test pilot, and so being an astronaut was - was not my end point in, you know, either I achieved success by being an astronaut, or if I don't get picked, I'm not successful. I loved my career as a pilot, and it was a bonus to be selected as an astronaut.
Every astronaut flew into space for a living. But while NASA has not solved the security problems, I would not put me back into a shuttle - and no other astronaut. The confidence is shaken.
My neighborhood was rough, but I live a great life now. I don't fight that much now. I don't look for it anyway, but if someone hits your mother, whether you're a star, an accountant, or an astronaut or anything... I mean it's your mother, so I lost my mind.
Sometimes people ask me how difficult the astronaut program was, but being in Sierra Leone, being responsible for the health of more than 200 people, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, at age 26 - that prepared me to take on a lot of different challenges.
There is no one area of chemical engineering that specifically helped me in my career as an astronaut, it was more the general education in engineering. Also, it was a very difficult and rigorous course. So, it made me strong and resourceful.
It took me a long time to get selected as an astronaut. In fact, I applied for 20 years before I was selected.
I think Dawn has done an amazing job showing that asteroids aren't just hunks of rock. They're worlds - they're places an astronaut can explore. I think the Rosetta mission also did an amazing job of that.
As an astronaut, you have a very defined set of tasks to do. Those tasks may require you to work 60, 70 or 80 hours a week.
If my vision was good enough, I'd be an astronaut.
Then there was the challenge to keep doing better and better, to fly the best test flight that anybody had ever flown. That led to my being recognized as one of the more experienced test pilots, and that led to the astronaut business.
I was the first Navy, Marine or Air Force person who had been an astronaut to return back to the Air Force. I had certain expectations about what would be a reasonable and desirable position to be assigned to after my years of service.
I didn't really decide that I wanted to be an astronaut for sure until the end of college.
I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just jet pilots. I'm in a world of my own.
I grew up in Texas City, Texas. I didn't know anybody who was a director or whose parents or grandparents were directors. I met somebody from a nearby town one time whose father had been to the moon - it was far more likely to be an astronaut than it was to be a writer or a director.
And now for Return to Flight, I'm chief of robotics working in the astronaut office in Houston, as a Canadian.
Being an astronaut is a wonderful career. I feel very privileged. But what I really hope for young people is that they find a career they're passionate about, something that's challenging and worthwhile.
It so happened that my goals kind of matched my career progression toward becoming an astronaut.
I never made a career decision based solely on my desire to be an astronaut. I attended the Naval Academy because I wanted to be a Navy pilot. I majored in math because math had always come pretty easily to me and I liked it.
I was selected to be an astronaut on a military program called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory back in '67. That program got cancelled in '69 and NASA ended up taking half of us.
I didn't really realize that writing... would be fun and people would pay you to do it. Being an astronaut is a glory profession, and so is writing, in a way.
What I was most curious about was why Armstrong, a top U.S. Navy test pilot, flying the most advanced aircraft in the world, would want to join the astronaut corps in 1962, which included chimpanzees and monkeys.