NASA was going to pick a public school teacher to go into space, observe and make a journal about the space flight, and I am a teacher who always dreamed of going up into space.
I think that when NASA works on a moon shot, they know too well that all of the people working on it must do their job at 110 percent. Sometimes they probably put in 18 hour days, but they're aiming for the moon, and that's what counts.
My work at NASA has always been about team efforts, and so it's intrinsically about mentoring. I have been blessed with some brilliant colleagues who were able to take on huge challenges without a lot of guidance.
They used to time our elementary fire drills so we could watch the launches. I thought that was normal. I thought every kid watched every NASA launch.
I've had young women come to me and say that before they watched 'Voyager' it didn't really occur to them that they could be successful in a higher position in the field of science; girls going to MIT, girls pursuing astrophysics with a view to a career in NASA.
NASA asked me to create meals for the space shuttle. Thai chicken was the favorite. I flew in a fake space shuttle, but I have no desire to go into space after seeing the toilet.
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.
The costs of badly-run NASA projects are paid for with cutbacks or delays in NASA projects that didn't go over budget. Hence the guilty are rewarded and the innocent are punished.
NASA needs to focus on the things that are really important and that we do not know how to do. The agency is a pioneering force, and that is where its competitive advantage lies.
If NASA is to reach beyond the Moon and someday reach Mars, it must be relieved of the burden of launching people and cargo to low earth orbit. To do that, we must invest more in commercial spaceflight.
As a scientist in charge of space sensors and entire space missions before I was at NASA, I myself was involved in projects that overran. But that's no excuse for remaining silent about this growing problem or failing to champion reform.
I interned at NASA for five years, and I grew up in Cape Canaveral, and my grandfather was an engineer on the Mercury capsule, and my grandmother was a software engineer. I literally grew up playing on the Mercury capsule prototypes.
I am humbled and excited by new opportunities for me to support and share the amazing work NASA is doing to help us travel farther into the solar system and work with the next generation of science and technology leaders.
NASA wanted to assure its ability to examine the spacecraft in orbit for signs of damage.
I've been collecting articles on extremophile bacteria for at least the last ten years. I find them fascinating, whether they live in boiling pools at Yellowstone, around thermal vents at the floors of the oceans, or on Mars, where NASA has been searching for them as the first evidence of life beyond Earth.
I have some NASA memorabilia from the early Apollo days that I can't imagine parting with. I've always wanted to play sort of like a space cowboy, too, like the idea of Captain Kirk. I think that's everybody's dream though, right?
NASA has spin-offs, and it's a huge and very impressive list, including accurate and affordable LASIK eye surgery.
NASA will send up a big sun shade that will be in orbit between the earth and sun and deflect 2 or 3 percent of the sunshine back into space. It would be cheaper than the international space station.
Would offering the Mars Prize damage NASA? I don't think so.
In 1983, NASA invited Canada to fly three payload specialists, in part because we had contributed the robotic arm that is used on the shuttle.
We actually look to the scientific community to kind of come back to NASA and tell us what the priorities should be. And then at NASA, we try to look within our budget and say, 'What can we accommodate, and what are the most important things for the nation?'
NASA space scientists have been studying giraffe skin so they can apply what they learn from it to the construction of spacesuits.
I fully expect that NASA will send me back to the moon as they treated Sen. Glenn, and if they don't do otherwise, why, then I'll have to do it myself.
My dad worked at NASA his whole career; he's a research scientist.
I think a lot of people in Washington are extremely suspicious of NASA.
NASA has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve. It's sad that we are turning the programme in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people.
If I were to do a movie about Apollo 13, I'd be at NASA studying what it took to go into space. It's part of your job to go deep, to interview the right people.
I grew up in this business... A lot of my life has been centered around this question about how NASA is helping us to understand our own home planet... and to understand our place in the universe.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
The 18,000 NASA employees are full of galactic talents and abilities and are ready to accomplish whatever they're directed to do.
I'm actually a NASA brat. My father was a rocket scientist. He started working at NASA before it was NASA in 1959.
Sending greeting cards to aliens is hardly a new idea. In 2005, Craigslist solicited messages for broadcast to space by a transmitter in Florida, and in 2008, NASA beamed a Beatles song to the North Star (Polaris), on the assumption that any putative Polarians would appreciate the Fab Four's 1960s-genre compositions.
When I got to college, I discovered how many incredible opportunities NASA offered students pursuing a career in the space industry.
My career with the Navy and NASA gave me an incredible chance to showcase public service to which I am dedicated, and what we can accomplish on the big challenges of our day.
NASA didn't give a crap what gender you were or what race you were. If you could do the math, you were valuable.
Two months after I got out of test pilot school, I saw an advert that said NASA was recruiting more astronauts. The best job you could have as a test pilot was being an astronaut, so I volunteered.