I Was Sold On Flying As Soon

I Hate To Think That We May Be Out There Seven To Ten Years Out And Dependent On The Russians For Our Journey Into Space.

I Think In America We Have To Get Back To Being The Best Educated General Citizenry In The World And Make Sure We Do Not Lose Our Lead In Research, If We're To Have A Leadership Position In The World.

We Used To Joke About Canned Men, Putting People In A Can And Seeing How Far You Can Send Them And Bring Them Back. That's Not The Purpose Of This Program... Space Is A Laboratory, And We Go Into It To Work And Learn The New.

There Had Been A Number Of Failures But We Weren't Going Out To Ride A Failure. And We Felt They'd Corrected All The Difficulties With The Boosters Before That Time And The Launch Problems. And So We Had A Lot Of Confidence That There Was Going To Be A Successful Mission. We Weren't Off On Some Suicide Effort, Certainly.

I Think No Matter Where We Go In Space To Me The Important Thing Is Not Only Getting There And Getting Back, But It's Also Doing Research, Because That Opens Up As A Possibility With That New Distance Of Travel In Space.