Buzz Aldrin quotes:

By refocusing our space program on Mars for America's future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it's time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface.

Because of his military service, Dad was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

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.

Whenever I gaze up at the moon, I feel like I'm on a time machine. I am back to that precious pinpoint of time, standing on the foreboding - yet beautiful - Sea of Tranquility. I could see our shining blue planet Earth poised in the darkness of space.

Mars, we know, was once wet and warm. Was it home to life? And what can living and learning to work on its rust-colored surface teach us about the future of our own planet, Earth? Answering those mysteries may hold the key to our future.

There's no doubt who was a leader in space after the Apollo Program. Nobody came close to us. And our education system, in science, technology, engineering and math, was at the top of the world. It's no longer there. We're descending rather rapidly.

I've led a life of such structured discipline and always had a goal in mind of knowing what I was doing, from West Point to the Air Force combat, MIT, looking for new things to study and get involved in. And then I got into the space program, and how disciplined can you get?

I think the American Dream used to be achieving one's goals in your field of choice - and from that, all other things would follow. Now, I think the dream has morphed into the pursuit of money: Accumulate enough of it, and the rest will follow.

Going back to the moon is not visionary in restoring space leadership for America. Like its Apollo predecessor, it will prove to be a dead end littered with broken spacecraft, broken dreams and broken policies.

As we reflect back upon the tragic loss of Challenger and her brave crew of heroes who were aboard that fateful day, I am reminded that they truly represented the best of us, as they climbed aloft on a plume of propellant gasses, reaching for the stars, to inspire us who were Earthbound.

Growing up, I was fascinated with Buck Rogers' airplanes. As I began to mature in World War II, it became jets and rocket planes. But it was always in the air.

I came to dedicate my life to opening space to the average person and crafting designs for new spaceships that could take us far from home. But since Apollo ended, such travels were only in our collective memory.

Computers allow us to squeeze the most out of everything, whether it's Google looking up things, so I guess that tends to make us a little lazy about reading books and doing things the hard way to understand how those things work.

The society of life on Mars, or the challenge of making Mars more livable, will have significant benefits on our attempts to modify and change in some ways the environment here on Earth.

A hybrid human-robot mission to investigate an asteroid affords a realistic opportunity to demonstrate new technological capabilities for future deep-space travel and to test spacecraft for long-duration spaceflight.

To send humans back to the moon would not be advancing. It would be more than 50 years after the first moon landing when we got there, and we'd probably be welcomed by the Chinese. But we should return to the moon without astronauts and build, with robots, an international lunar base, so that we know how to build a base on Mars robotically.

The biggest benefit of Apollo was the inspiration it gave to a growing generation to get into science and aerospace.

When President Kennedy took office, I was in the midst of my education.

Globalisation means many other countries are asserting themselves and trying to take over leadership. Please don't ask Americans to let others assume the leadership of human exploration. We can do wonderful science on the Moon, and wonderful commercial things. Then we can pack up and move on to Mars.

Mars has a bit of air pressure; maybe we can build up that atmosphere to be a bit more accommodating to humans.

If we can conquer space, we can conquer childhood hunger.

I suggest that going to Mars means permanence on the planet - a mission by which we are building up a confidence level to become a two-planet species.

Is the destiny of the human species to sit back and play with our mouse and computer and imagine, fantasize?

Astronauts working for the government will always need to be either pilots or mission specialists. Those who want to be pilots should have military experience - ideally, a test pilot background.

Russia perhaps is still entertaining the possibility that the moons of Mars might have access to ice or water.

Over the years, I think I've matured in my spiritual evolution and development to understand a bit more than the narrow religious thinking - to move beyond that through a sort of perfection of the grandiose nature of the universe, and how perfect it is it in its sense and how satisfied we should all be in our place in that.

Does it make sense for the U.S. to expend hundreds of billions of dollars to mount a new Apollo-style program to return to the moon? Or have we blazed that trail? Shouldn't we help other nations achieve this goal with their own resources but with our help?

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?

To move forward, what's required is a unified space agenda based on exploration, science, development, commerce, and security.

My father's an early aviator, and my first flight was with him at age two. Now, despite the fact that I got sick on the flight, I still enjoyed it, I believe.

What's aero braking? That's a way to use the gravity and upper atmosphere of Earth to sling shot a ship out either deeper into space, or slow it down to be 'captured' by Earth's gravity.

I know: If you're looking down at Earth, you're looking through an atmosphere that has a bit of haze in many places and not just occasional clouds.

It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the Moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements.

Exploring and colonizing Mars can bring us new scientific understanding of climate change, of how planet-wide processes can make a warm and wet world into a barren landscape. By exploring and understanding Mars, we may gain key insights into the past and future of our own world.

Space is not just going up and coming back down again. Space is getting into orbit and being there, living there, establishing a presence, a permanence.

Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.

I have no intention of selling any more of the historical Apollo 11 items in my possession for the remainder of my life. I intend to pass a portion of these items on to my children and to loan the most important items for permanent display in suitable museums around the country.

I'm urging NASA to foster the development of what I call 'runway landers.' No, that's not the name of a high stakes gambler from Vegas. It's a type of spacecraft that flies to orbit like the retiring Shuttles but then glides to a landing like an airplane on a runway. Just like the Shuttles do.

Just as Mars - a desert planet - gives us insights into global climate change on Earth, the promise awaits for bringing back to life portions of the Red Planet through the application of Earth Science to its similar chemistry, possibly reawakening its life-bearing potential.

For the future, primarily, we must educate people in science, engineering, technology and math.

There may be aliens in our Milky Way galaxy, and there are billions of other galaxies. The probability is almost certain that there is life somewhere in space.

I think the people who experienced the Apollo missions came away from that experience wondering to themselves, 'When can we get a chance to experience spaceflight?' I've heard that many, many times: that people got into a new career field hoping that they would be able to experience spaceflight.

Who put their foot in the Missouri River first: Lewis or Clark? Who cares!

As someone who flew two space capsules and twice landed in the ocean, I can attest from personal experience how much logistics work is needed to get you home.

By venturing into space, we improve life for everyone here on Earth - scientific advances and innovations that come from this kind of research create products we use in our daily lives.

Anthony and the Magic Picture Frame' tells it like it really was in America's early space program - the adventure, the risks, and the rewards.

The moon I see now is the same moon I saw before. Except that before, when I looked at it, it was in anticipation of what it would be like when I got there. That's behind me now.

Anything we can do in the near future that begins to stimulate the interest of people - seeing somebody down the street have an opportunity to go into space - buoys up the whole neighborhood.

I think both the space shuttle program and the International Space Station program have not really lived up to their expectations.

Instead of planning the retirement of the Space Shuttle program, America should be preparing the shuttles for their next step in space: evolving, not shutting them down and laying off thousands of people.

The beauty of Hawaii probably surpasses other places. I like the Big Island and the two mountains, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, where you can look out at the stars.

There are many people talking about access to space and, 'How can we make that cheaper? How can we turn that into a Southwest Airlines versus the big airlines?'

Space tourism is a logical outgrowth of the adventure tourist market.

As we begin to have landings on the moon, we can alternate those with vertical launch of similar crew modules on similar launch vehicles for vertical-launch tourism in space, if you want to call it that... adventure travel.

Bringing an asteroid back to Earth? What's that have to do with space exploration? If we were moving outward from there, and an asteroid is a good stopping point, then fine. But now it's turned into a whole planetary defense exercise at the cost of our outward exploration.

NASA's been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve, and it's sad that we are turning the program in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation it provides to young people.

If we go back to the moon, we're guaranteed second, maybe third place because while we are spending all that money, Russia has its eye on Mars. Landing people on the moon will be terribly consuming of resources we don't have. It sounds great - 'Let's go back. This time we're going to stay.' I don't know why you would want to stay on the moon.

Armstrong described the lunar surface as 'beautiful.' I thought to myself, 'It's not really beautiful. It's magnificent that we're here, but what a desolate place we are visiting.'

What are you going to do with astronauts who first reach the surface of Mars and then turn around and rocket back home-ward? What are they going to do, write their memoirs? Would they go again? Having them repeat the voyage, in my view, is dim-witted. Why don't they stay there on Mars?

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.

Space architectures capable of supporting a permanent human presence on Mars are extraordinarily complex, with many different interdependent systems.

My expertise is the space program and what it should be in the future based on my experience of looking at the transitions that we've made between pre-Sputnik days and getting to the moon.

You are not going to change the minds of people who are looking for attention.

The way I see it, what is going to come out of the moon activities is a respect for U.S. leadership.

Trips to Mars, the Moon, even orbit, will require that we provide astrotourists with as many comforts from home as possible, including paying each other.

I wrote 'Reaching for the Moon' because I wanted to tell kids that all of us have a moon, a dream, that we can strive for. Even if you don't attain it, you can at least reach for it.

Exploring Mars is a far different venture from Apollo expeditions to the moon; it necessitates leaving our home planet on lengthy missions with a constrained return capability.

As a student, I wrote English reports on science fiction.

Space travel for everyone is the next frontier in the human experience.

A family needs to work as a team, supporting each other's individual aims and aspirations.

I'm in favor of changing the destination of humans. There are a lot of manned missions that can be done, but not in the direction of the moon.

There are always door openings. And gradually, it accumulates. The opportunities open up in front of you.

I'm convinced that sending people to Mars is so expensive that if you go once and bring the people back and then go again and bring the people back, we're eventually going to run out of money. But what if we send people the first time and they don't come back? What if they stay there?

In Mars, we've been given a wonderful set of moons... where we can send continuous numbers of people.

When the time comes to start building deep space transports and refueling rocket tankers, it will be the commercial industry that steps up, not another government-owned, government-managed enterprise.

We could have human intelligence in orbit around Mars, building things there.

Heavy lifting doesn't need to be heavy spending if we do the job right.

My first biography written in '73 was not 'Journey To The Moon.' It was 'Return To Earth.' Because for me, that was the more difficult task - disappointment.

In space, you don't get that much noise. Noise doesn't propagate in a vacuum.

I was motivated to improve the U.S. strategy of going back to the moon in 1985. That's a long time ago. Going back to the moon would be a great achievement for tourism adventure flights.

Before deciding what to do about national space policy, Obama set up an outside review panel of space experts, headed up by my friend Norm Augustine, former head of Lockheed Martin and a former government official.

There's a historical milestone in the fact that our Apollo 11 landing on the moon took place a mere 66 years after the Wright Brothers' first flight.

The life expectancy of people going to Mars may be decreased by the higher level of radiation that they receive.

One of the major problems with long-term deep space human flight is the requirement for radiation shielding.

We can continue to try and clean up the gutters all over the world and spend all of our resources looking at just the dirty spots and trying to make them clean. Or we can lift our eyes up and look into the skies and move forward in an evolutionary way.

Nobody ever asks who was the seventh person on the Moon. The only thing they know is who's number one and who's number two. Does anybody know who the last man was?

I inherited depression from my mother's side of the family.

Not everyone will understand this need for America to lead the world in space.

Having walked on the Moon, I know something about what we need to explore, really explore, in space.

We need the next generation to be motivated and to push technological boundaries, to seek out new innovations.

To me, money is a commodity that a person must have to function, not a goal in itself.

The leader of an Earth organization who makes a commitment to history - of humans living on Earth, to begin permanent settlement/occupation of not the moon, but of another planet - this leader will have a legacy for history that will supersede Columbus, Genghis Khan or almost any recognized leader.

With his deeds, not only words, President Obama has revitalized our struggling space program.

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.

Timing has always been a key element in my life. I have been blessed to have been in the right place at the right time.

The best way to study Mars is with two hands, eyes and ears of a geologist, first at a moon orbiting Mars... and then on the surface.

America's can-do spirit cast a warm glow across nations and cultures, generating more goodwill and support for our country's ideals and causes than had otherwise been possible.

Ray Bradbury is one who is contributing to the understanding of the imagination and the curiosity of the human race.

I feel we need to remind the world about the Apollo missions and that we can still do impossible things.

The first footfalls on Mars will mark a historic milestone, an enterprise that requires human tenacity matched with technology to anchor ourselves on another world.

I think the climate has been changing for billions of years.

Us reaching the moon convinced Gorbachev and other leaders that the Soviet Union couldn't compete with the U.S., so they revised their agenda. But people have short memories.

I am definitely not rich.

Apollo 11 will probably go down in history as one of the major responses of two nations facing each other with threatening technologies - sometimes called mutually assured destruction. It was also the America's response to the apparent superiority of the Russians in putting objects into space before USA could.

My sister called me "Buzzard" when I was a baby - she couldn't say "Brother" so I've been Buzz my whole life.

I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements.

To appropriately respond to an emergency requires a very clear mind, to cooly analyze what the observations are and how to fix it.

When we set out to land people on the surface of Mars, I think we should as a nation, as a world, commit ourselves to supporting a growing settlement and colonization there. To visit a few times and then withdraw would be an unforgivable waste of resources.

My favourite thing to do on this planet is to scuba dive.

My family has always supported my activities, whether it was doing combat in Korea, flying progressively and challenging fighter-jet aircraft in Europe, or studying for a doctor's degree at MIT. They have been always very supportive and understanding of the challenges and risks involved in my career. A family needs to work as a team, supporting each other's individual aims and aspirations.

Knowledge of the past and an optimistic view of the present give you great opportunities.

Everyone should take their hats off to Neil Armstrong. He is a humble guy who doesn't wave his own flag.

Don't waste your time on beaming people up or down. Instead, consider gravity waves as advanced physics of the universe that could be used to travel interstellar distances.

History will remember the inhabitants of this century as the people who went from Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years, only to languish for the next 30 in low Earth orbit. At the core of the risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve.

I'm sure the most favorite airplane in my career would still be the Sabre F86 cleft wing , which allowed me to be credited with 2 Russian-built Mig-15 destroyed during the Korean War. Where I was in 1953.

Drive over to the nearest airport, and enroll in flight classes. You will experience the joy of freedom in the air above, as you study the mechanics of how this is made possible by understanding the construction, the laws of motion, the air that can provide lift when it is moved by propulsion through the air, and stay above the gravity pulling the airplane back down to earth.

I think humans will reach Mars, and I would like to see it happen in my lifetime.

Mars is there, waiting to be reached.

The pilgrims on the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock. To my knowledge, they didn't wait around for a return trip to Europe. You settle some place with a purpose. If you don't want to do that, stay home. You avoid an awful lot of risks by not venturing outward.

It was designed to have an impact on the stalemate over Mutually Assured Destruction with the Soviet Union. Us reaching the moon convinced Gorbachev and other leaders that the Soviet Union couldn't compete with the U.S., so they revised their agenda. But people have short memories.