Ken Jenks' Favorite Quotes

"Even considering the improvements possible... the gas turbine could hardly be considered a feasible application to airplanes because of the difficulty of complying with the stringent weight requirements."
US National Academy of Sciences, 1940
"It may not be possible to build a vehicle with single-stage-to-orbit capability in the mid 1990s."
US National Academy of Sciences, 1990
"ACHTUNG! "Alles Touristen Und Non-technishen Lookens Peepers! Das Machine control is Nicht Fur Gerfingenpoken Und Mittengrabben. Oderwise is Easy Schnappen Der Springenwerk, Blowenfuse, Und Poppencorken Mit Spitzensparken. Der Machine is Diggen by Experten Only. Is Nicht Fur Gerverken by Das Dummkopfen. Das Rubberneken Sightseenen Keepen Das Cottonpicken Hands in Das Pockets, So Relaxen Und Watchen Das Blinkenlights."
"Finxerunt animi, raro et perpauca loquentis."

"To action little, less to words inclined."

Horace
"Is there not an abode in Hell for the arrogant?"
Koran, SURA XXIX - The Troops, v. 63
ASCAN (Astronaut Candidate) 10 COMMANDMENTS
  1. Keep smiling, but not grinning
  2. Keep your humor harmless, pure and perfect. People don't understand irony.
  3. Keep your weaknesses to yourself. If you don't point them out to others, they will never see them.
  4. Never complain; make survival look easy.
  5. You are expected to say something nice after each flight, class, or simulation.
  6. If you can't say something nice, lie -- nicely.
  7. In particular, practice saying, "Thanks for pointing that out, sir. I'll really work on that."
  8. Be aggressively humble and dynamically inconspicuous. Save your brilliance for your friends and family.
  9. Remember -- whatever's encouraged is mandatory. Whatever's discouraged is prohibited.
  10. Nothing is sometimes a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
REVIEW THIS LIST DAILY
"Un asno viejo sabe mas que un potro."

"An old ass knows more than a young colt."

A. Perez
"...back to the moon, back to the future, and, this time, back to stay."
George Bush
"Posting to Usenet is like blabbering in the town square."
Steve Yelvington, steve@thelake.mn.org, in alt.culture.usenet
"When faced with an unavoidable physical confrontation I always thought that it showed a higher degree of intelligence to strike the first blow."
Larry Csonka
"I use not only all the brains I have, but all I can borrow."
Woodrow Wilson
"[Space travel] will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven."
Werner Von Braun (1912-1977)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Clarke's Law
"One who conquers others is great. One who conquers himself is mighty."
Lao Tze
"The earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind will not stay in the cradle forever."
Konstantin Tsiolkvosky
"Know when to quit (in anything). Know how to quit (gracefully). Never lie to any of your bosses (you will have to decide who your bosses are, but there will always be some). Be absolutely, 100% faithful to your word."
David C. Schultz, Manager, Space Shuttle Program, Management Integration Office, 1993
Aldrin: "Contact light. Okay, engine stop. ACA out of detent."

Armstrong: "Got it."

Aldrin: "Mode controls, both auto. Descent engine command override, off. Engine arm off...."

CAPCOM: "We copy you down, Eagle."

Armstrong: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."

"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it."
Gene Spafford (spaf@cs.purdue.edu), 1992
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world."
Isaac Asimov
"A scientist can discover a new star, but he cannot make one. He would have to ask an engineer to do that."
Gordon L. Glegg, American Engineer, 1969
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes..."
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
T.S. Eliot
"Let us retract the foreskin of ignorance and apply the wirebrush of enlightenment."
Geoff Miller
"The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises -- it is a set of challenges."
John F. Kennedy
"We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is fun."
John F. Kennedy, as [mis]quoted by Scott Brigham, scotbri@rosemount.com, in alt.folklore.urban
"What beauty. I saw clouds and their light shadows on the distant dear earth.... The water looked like darkish, slightly gleaming spots.... When I watched the horizon, I saw the abrupt, contrasting transition from the earth's light-colored surface to the absolutely black sky. I enjoyed the rich color spectrum of the earth. It is surrounded by a light blue aureole that gradually darkens, becoming turquiose, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black. [Observations during the first manned orbit of the earth, April 12, 1961.]
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, Russian Astronaut, 1961
"This is Gene and I'm on the surface... And as I take man's last steps from the surface, back home... for some time to come, but we believe not too long into the future, I would like to just let... what I believe history will record... that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. "And as we leave the moon and Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return - with peace and hope for all mankind. "Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."
Gene Cernan, Apollo 17 Astronaut, the last man on the moon. For now.
"We at NASA develop cutting-edge technology for our aeronautics and space programs. We view technology transfer as a way of life. It's one of our top priorities."
Daniel S. Goldin, NASA Administrator
"NASA turns dreams into realities and makes science fiction into fact"
Daniel S. Goldin, NASA Administrator
"Developing new technology is what drives this country forward. It raises our standard of living by creating the new industries and new jobs of tomorrow. I believe America today is crying out for organizations like NASA to step up to the challenge of developing cutting-edge, dual-use technology that can both keep America pushing outward into space and put Americans back to work."
Daniel S. Goldin, NASA Administrator
"We want to abolish the 'not invented here' syndrome which breeds insularity and fails to seize the good ideas within and outside of NASA."
Daniel S. Goldin, NASA Administrator
"Some people ask why NASA spends money in space. We don't. We spend it all on Earth -- and in the United States. The one percent of the federal budget -- and one-quarter of one percent of the GNP -- we invest in NASA is a vital investment in our nation's competitiveness"
Daniel S. Goldin, NASA Administrator
"We put humans on the Moon in less time than we've spent debating a space station."
Daniel S. Goldin, NASA Administrator
"Better. Faster. Cheaper."
Daniel S. Goldin, NASA Administrator
"Is there life on Mars? Maybe not now. But there will be."
Daniel S. Goldin, NASA Administrator, 24 August 1992
"The only way to make a difference in the world is to put ten times as much effort into everything as anyone else thinks is reasonable. It doesn't leave any time for golf or cocktails, but it gets things done."
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover
"Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience."
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities."
Albert Einstein
LESHER'S ODE TO DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING:

"A host is a host from coast to coast..
& no one will talk to a host that's close
Unless the host (that isn't close)
is busy, hung or dead"
wb8foz@skybridge.SCL.CWRU.Edu (David Lesher) in sci.space.shuttle
"Good ideas are common -- what's uncommon are people who'll work hard enough to bring them about."
Ashleigh Brilliant
"Instant gratification takes too long."
Lisa Jenks
"The human element is the foundation of our manned space program. When it's powered and running, it knows no limits. It's infinitely flexible and has resilience and reliability and strength that no mechanical system can match. We call that machinery a team and we power it with spirit."
Marsha Ivins, astronaut
"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961
"Don't LOOK at anything in a physics lab,
Don't TASTE anything in a chemistry lab,
Don't SMELL anything in a biology lab,
Don't TOUCH anything in a medical lab,
and, most importantly,
Don't LISTEN to anything in a philosophy department."
Timothy Vaughan, Boston University, tvaughan@buphyk.bu.edu
"The crowd will follow a leader who marches twenty steps in advance; but if he is a thousand steps in front of them, they do not see and do not follow him, and any literary freebooter who chooses may shoot him with impunity."
Georg Brandes, Danish literary critic (1842 - 1927)
"Fire streaks the heavens; battle has begun."
Klingon "Lullaby"
"It is mankind's manifest destiny to bring our humanity into space, to colonize this galaxy. And as a nation, we have the power to determine whether America will lead or will follow. I say that America must lead."
Ronald Reagan
"...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..."
Plato, "Phaedrus"
"HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND."
"The primary mission of the Space Station Freedom is to provide supporting functions and operations to multiple users. These functions and operations provide a capability for: 1) material processing research 2) life sciences research including permanently manned presence 3) a permanent observatory"
Space Station Freedom Program Definition and Requirements, SSP 30000, Section 3, Revision L, page 1-2
"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything."
Edward John Phelps, American Diplomat/Lawyer (1825-1895)
"It is the moon, I ken her horn That's blinkin in the lift sae hie; She shines sae bright to wyle us hame, But by my soothe she'll wait a wee!"
Robert Burns, Scottish Poet (1759-1796)
OBJECTIVES FOR NASA
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1988, downloaded from spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov
"In the high-tech world, if you're not on the net, you're not in the know."
The Economist, December 26, 1992 as quoted in alt.internet.services by Carl Oppedahl
"[I swear] I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."
Standard Form 61, Appointment Affidavits, the oath taken by all new Federal employees.
"If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion"
Robert A. Heinlein
"Professor P. E. Sandorff of Massachusetts Insitute of Technology, five weeks prior to President Eisenhower's announcement of the Vanguard project, offered interesting details of what he termed the airplane-launching method. Sandorff considers the possibility of launching a satellite vehicle with a 500-pound payload from an aircraft (such as the B-52) at 9.5 miles' altitude. In this way, by lifting the vehicle through much of the atmosphere and adding the aircraft's speed to the vehicle, a satellite could be launched with a lower weight and cost than would be the case for a ground-launched vehicle."
From _Satellite_, Bergaust and Beller, 1956, p. 31, as quoted in sci.space by Bruce Watson (wats@scicom.alphaCDC.COM)
"[The Space Shuttle Orbiter, Columbia,] OV-102 is affectionately known as 'The Penguin', a name it earned during the leak investigation. Definition: Penguin - A black & white flightless bird."
Ken Hollis, HOLLIS@TITAN.KSC.NASA.GOV, in sci.space.shuttle
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derilicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."
Calvin Coolidge
"Plan. Do. Test. Repeat."
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit... somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
Vice President Dan Quayle
"Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point."

"The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing."

Pascal
"The reliability of any machine is inversely proportional to the number and significance of any persons watching it."
dgreen@ew0340.astro.ge.com (David Green)
"Quoting NASA is by no means a way of ensuring that you have the best information on a topic, for all you know it may well be that all you are doing is quoting rhetoric, rather than fact."
holloway@titan.ksc.nasa.gov in sci.space.shuttle, article <1993Feb10.191934.5359@titan.ksc.nasa.gov>
"The [NASA] culture has changed from being one of technical excellence to one of low-risk management decisions."
Chuck Shotton, cshotton@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu, in sci.space
"No one tests the depth of a river with both feet."
African Proverb
"And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start To mold a new reality closer to the heart."
Rush
"The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage."
Henry David Thoreau, "Walden," 1854
"We're very sorry, Mister Schrodinger, but the cat refuses to go in the box."
Steve Caskey (caskey_s@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz)
"Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering the Farmer's Daughter."
Julius H. Comroe
"Hate the .sig, not the .sigger."
Posted in sci.space by Rich Schroeppel (rcs@cs.arizona.edu)
"Simple systems do not evolve from complex ones."
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology (henry@zoo.toronto.edu), in sci.space.shuttle
"I have had my solutions for a long time but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
Carl Friedrich Gauss, Germany, 1777-1855
"The worst thing you can say to a true revolutionary is that his revolution is unnecessary, that the problems can be corrected without radical change. Telling people that paradise can be attained without the revolution is treason of the vilest kind.
"Trying to harness these people to support spaceflight is like trying to harness a buffalo to pull your plough. He's got plenty of muscle, all right, but the furrow will go where he wants, not where you want."
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry April, 1993, in sci.space
"The thing's hollow -- it goes on forever -- and -- oh my God! -- it's full of stars!"
Dave Bowman, In Arthur Clarke's "2001"
"...Development of the space station is as inevitable as the rising of the sun."
Wernher von Braun
The company stood rooted to the ground in terror. The creature was about fifty feet tall, with wide lapels, long dangling participles, and a pronounced gazetteer.
"Aiyee!" shouted Legolam. "A Thesaurus!"
"Maim!" roared the monster. "Mutilate, mangle, crush. See HARM."
"Quick," cried Goodgulf. "Into the cavern!"
"Bored of the Rings," National Lampoon, (c) 1969
"Every scientific truth goes through three states: first, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it."
Jean Loius Agassiz, Swiss/American Naturalist/Geologist (1807-1894)
"After breakfast, I hook a full urine bag to the overboard dump valve [of Gemini 10] and am rewarded with the usual snowstorm of escaping white particles. The constellation 'Urion,' as Wally Schirra has dubbed it, is formed by the instantaneous freezing of the urine stream as it reaches the vacuum of space and breaks into thousands of individual miniature spheres. Cascading out in an irregular stream, they whiz past the window and tumble off into infinity, glistening virginal white in the sunlight instead of the nasty yellow we know them to be. The fairytale quality is typical of this place, an unreal world far above the unseen squalor below."
Michael Collins, "Carrying the Fire," p. 246
"There prevails among men of letters an opinion, that all appearance of science is hateful to women."
Samuel Johnson
"Words wound. But as a vetran of twelve years in the United States Senate, I happily attest that they do not kill."
Lyndon B. Johnson
Flying into the sky on a pillar of fire is an inherently dangerous thing to do.
Ken Jenks
It's as if all of humanity lived in a small valley surrounded by a large forest, which might contain dangerous animals, vast mineral resources, or boulders which could fall into the valley. If you lived in such a valley, wouldn't you want to send a scouting party into the forest to find out what's there? That's what NASA is doing. We're the scouting party for all mankind.
Ken Jenks
Do or do not. There is no try.
Yoda, Jedi Master
Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, there you long to return.
Leonardo da Vinci
Last modified: Aug 19, 1995
Author: Ken Jenks