Cdex, Inc. (fka CDEX)

[whitemanfromtown]

Well scared, you are always the peacemaker and gentleman. I am surprised you are still long though.

I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years . . . Ever since, I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions.

— Wilbur Wright, in a speech to the Aero Club of France, 5 November 1908.

Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next ten.

— Neil Armstrong, speech to joint session of Congress 16 September 1969.

It is not really necessary to look too far into the future; we see enough already to be certain it will be magnificent. Only let us hurry and open the roads.

— Wilbur Wright

There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, 'tis for some other. The spirit cannot die; and man, who shall know all and shall have wings . . .

— Leonardo da Vinci

The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to he nest whence he sprang.

— Leonardo da Vinci

For my own part, I declare I know nothing whatever about it, but looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?

— Vincent van Gogh, 1889

To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow.

— Metrodorus of Chios, 4th century B.C.

I will ignore all ideas for new works and engines of war, the invention of which has reached its limits and for whose improvement I see no further hope.

— Julius Frontinus, chief military engineer to the Emperor Vespasian, cica AD 70.

Someone asked the master about the principles (tao) of mounting to dangerous heights and traveling into the vast inane. The Master said, "Some have made flying cars (fei chhe) with wood from the inner part of the jujube tree, using ox-leather [straps] fastened to returning blades so as to set the machine in motion (huan chien i yin chhi chi).

— Pao Phu Tau, Fourth Century AD, earliest description of a helicopter?

First, by the figurations of art there be made instruments of navigation without men to row them, as great ships to brooke the sea, only with one man to steer them, and they shall sail far more swiftly than if they were full of men; also chariots that shall move with unspeakable force without any living creature to stir them. Likewise an instrument may be made to fly withall if one sits in the midst of the instrument, and do turn an engine, by which the wings, being artificially composed, may beat the air after the manner of a flying bird.

— Frier Roger Bacon, thirteenth century.
See the original prophecy in Olde English

I have discovered that a screw-shaped device such as this, if it is well made from starched linen, will rise in the air if turned quickly.

— Leonardo Da Vinci, Codice Atlantico, describing his Helical Air Screw, 1480.

A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements.

— Leonardo da Vinci, 'Treatise on the Flight of Birds,' 1505.

God is infinite, so His universe must be too. Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of His kingdom made manifest; He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.

— Giordana Bruno, 'On the Infinite Universe and Worlds,' 1584. Giordana was executed by the Inquisition.

We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens ... The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.

— Johannes Kepler, 'Mysterium Cosmographicum,' 1596.

Ships and sails proper for the heavenly air should be fashioned. Then there will also be people, who do not shrink from the dreary vastness of space.

— Johannes Kepler, letter to Galileo Galilei, 1609.

As soon as somebody demonstrates the art of flying, settlers from our species of man will not be lacking [on the Moon and Jupiter]. . . . Who would have believed that a huge ocean could be crossed more peacefully and safely than the the narrow expanse of the Adriatic, the Baltic Sea or the English Channel? Provide ship or sails adapted to the heavenly breezes, and there will be some who will not fear even that void [of space]. . . . So, for those who will come shortly to attempt this journey, let us establish the astronomy: Galileo, you of Jupiter, I of the Moon.

— Johannes Kepler, letter to Galileo Galilei, 'Conversation with the Messenger from the Stars,' 19 April 1610.

The proposition that the sun is the centre of the world and does not move from place to place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressively contrary to Holy Scripture.
The proposition that the earth is not the centre of the world and immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith.
Ita pronunciamus nos Cardinalis infrascripti.

— F. Cardinalis de Asculo, G. Cardinalis Bentivolius, D. Cardinalis de Cremona, A. Cardinalis S. Honuphri, B. Cardinalis Gypsius., F. Cardinalis Verospius, M. Cardinalis Ginettus, Sentence of the Tribunal of the Supreme Inquisition against Galileo Galilei, 22 June 1633. It is often said that rising from his knees after recanting, Galileo said "E pur si muove!" (But it does move!) however there is no evidence to source such a quote. In 1992 Pope John Paul II finally issued an apology, lifting the edict of Inquisition against Galileo: "Galileo sensed in his scientific research the presence of the Creator who, stirring in the depths of his spirit, stimulated him, anticipating and assisting his intuitions."

Yet I do seriously and on good grounds affirm it possible to make a flying chariot in which a man may sit and give such a motion unto it as shall convey him through the air. And this perhaps might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum and commodities for traffic. It is not the bigness of anything in this kind that can hinder its motion, if the motive faculty be answerable thereunto. We see a great ship swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat. . . . 'Tis likely enough that there may be means invented of journeying to the Moon; and how happy they shall be that are first successful in this attempt.

— John Wilkins, 'A Discourse Concerning a New World and Another Planet,' book 1, 1640.

A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.

— Christopher Wren, 1657.

I believe I have found a way to make a machine lighter than air itself. . . . We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of the element air, which by unquestioned experiments is known to have weight.

— Francesco de Lana de Terzi of Brescia, the first to propose a flying machine based on sound scientific principles, 1670.

God would surely never allow such a machine to be successful, since it would cause much disturbance among the civil and political governments of mankind . . . no city would be proof against surprise . . . or ships that sail the sea. . . . Houses, fortresses, and cities could thus be destroyed, with the certainty that the airship would come to no harm, as the missiles could be thrown from a great height.

— Francesco de Lana de Terzi of Brescia, Italian Jesuit who was the first Westerner to write on the military uses of aerial attack, 1670.

Witness this new-made world, another Heav'n
From Heaven Gate not farr, founded in view
On the clear Hyaline, the Glassie Sea;
Of amplitude almost immense, with Starr's
Numerous, and every Starr perhaps a world
Of destined habitation.

— John Milton, 'Paradise Lost.' Book 7, 1674.

Flying would give such occasions for intrigues as people cannot meet with who have nothing but legs to carry them. You should have a couple of lovers make a midnight assignation upon the top of the monument, and see the cupola of St. Paul's covered with both sexes like the outside of a pigeon-house. Nothing would he more frequent than to see a beau flying in at a garret window, or a gallant giving chase to his mistress, like a hawk after a lark. The poor husband could not dream what was doing over his head. If he were jealous, indeed, he might clip his wife's wings, but what would this avail when there were flocks of whore-masters perpetually hovering over his house?

— Joseph Adoison, ‘The Guardian,’ 20 July 1713.

We have already begun to fly; several persons, here and there, have found the secret to fitting wings to themselves, of setting them in motion, so that they are held up in the air and are carried across streams . . . the art of flying is only just being born; it will be perfected, and some day we will go as far as the Moon.

— Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle.

What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?

— William Law, 'A Serious Call to a Devout and Holly Life XI,' 1728.

At first we will only skim the surface of the earth like young starlings, but soon, emboldened by practice and experience, we will spring into the air with the impetuousness of the eagle, diverting ourselves by watching the childish behavior of the little men or awling miserably around on the earth below us.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, c. 1750

You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck...I have no time for such nonsense.

— Napoleon, commenting on Fulton's Steamship.

It is entirely impossible for man to rise into the air and float there. For this you would need wings of tremendous dimensions and they would have to be moved at three feet per second. Only a fool would expect such a thing to be realized.

— Joseph de Lalande, academician, 'Journal de Paris,' 18 May 1782.

At sea let the British their neighbors defy—The French shall have frigates to traverse the sky.

— Philip Freneau, ‘The Progress of Ballons,’ 1784.

Soon shall thy arm, unconquer'd steam! afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;
Or on wide-waving wings extended bear
The flying chariot through the field of air.

— Erasmus Darwin, 'The Botanic Garden,' 1791.

He that can swim needs not despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of matter through which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborne by the air if you can renew any impulse upon it faster than the air can recede from the pressure... The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.

— Dr. Samuel Johnson, 'The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia,' 1759.

Anyone who should see in the sky such a globe should be aware that, far from being an alarming phenomenon, it is only a machine made of taffetas or light canvas covered with paper, that cannot possibly cause any harm, and which will someday prove serviceable to the wants of society.

— French government proclamation issued to allay public alarm about balloon flights, 1784.

What is the use of a new-born infant?

— Benjamin Franklin, when asked what was the use of a balloon, while he was the American Plenipotentiary to France in the early 1780s.

Soon shall thy arm, unconquer'd steam! afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;
Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear
The flying chariot through the field of air.

— Erasmus Darwin, (1731-1802), 'The Botanic Garden,' Part i. Canto i.

Bishop Wilkins prophesied that the time would come when gentlemen, when they were to go on a journey, would call for their wings as regularly as they call for their boots.

— Maria Edgeworth, 'Essay on Irish Bulls,' 1802

I am well convinced that 'Aerial Navigation' will form a most prominent feature in the progress of civilisation.

— Sir George Cayley, 1804

I may be expediting the attainment of an object that will in time be found of great importance to mankind; so much so, that a new era in society will commence from the moment that aerial navigation is familiarly realised. . . . I feel perfectly confident, however, that this noble art will soon be brought home to man's convenience, and that we shall be able to transport ourselves and our families, and their goods and chattels, more securely by air than by water, and with a velocity of from 20 to 100 miles per hour.

— Sir George Cayley, 1809

Sir, Your letter of the 15th is received, but Age has long since obliged me to withhold my mind from Speculations of the difficulty of those of your letter, that their are means of artificial buoyancy by which man may be supported in the Air, the Balloon has proved, and that means of directing it may be discovered is against no law of Nature and is therefore possible as in the case of Birds, but to do this by mechanical means alone in a medium so rare and unassisting as air must have the aid of some principal not yet generally known. However, I can really give no opinion understandingly on the subject and with more good will than confidence wish to you success.

— President Thomas Jefferson, 27 April, 1822.

Railroad carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of fifteen miles per hour by engines which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to the crops, scaring the livestock, and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such break-neck speed.

— President Martin Van Buren, 1829

Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean.

— Dr. Dionysus Lardner, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College, London, 1838.

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, Argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew,
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue.

— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 'Locksley Hall,' 1842.

Of all inventions of which it is possible to conceive in the future, there is none which so captivates the imagination as that of a flying machine. The power of rising up into the air and rushing in any direction desired at the rate of a mile or more in a minute is a power for which mankind would be willing to pay very liberally. What a luxurious mode of locomotion! To sweep along smoothly, gracefully, and swiftly over the treetops, changing course at pleasure, and alighting at will. How perfectly it would eclipse all other means of travel by land and sea! This magnificent problem, so alluring to the imagination and of the highest practical convenience and value, has been left heretofore to the dreams of a few visionaries and the feeble efforts of a few clumsy inventors. We, ourselves, have thought that, in the present state of human knowledge, it contained no promise of success. But, considering the greatness of the prize and the trifling character of the endeavors which have been put forth to obtain it, would it not indeed be well, as our correspondents suggest, to make a new and combined effort to realize it, under all the light and power of modern science and mechanism? . . . .

The simplest, however, of all conceivable flying machines would be a cylinder blowing out gas in the rear and driving itself along on the principle of the rocket. . . .

We might add several other hints to inventors who desire to enter on this enticing field, but we will conclude with only one more. The newly discovered metal aluminum, from its extraordinary combination of lightness and strength, is the proper material for flying machines.

— Scientific American, 8 September, 1860.

In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people who would shut up the human race upon this globe, we shall one day travel to the Moon, the planets, and the stars with the same facility, rapidity and certainty as we now make the ocean voyage from Liverpool to New York.

— Jules Verne, 'From the Earth to the Moon,' 1865

I believe, sir, in all the progress. Air navigation is the result of the oceanic navigation: from water the human has to pass in the air. Everywhere where creation will be breathable to him, the human will penetrate into the creation. Our only limit is life. There where ends the air column which prevents our machine to burst, the human has to stop. But he can, owes, and wants to go to there, and he will go. You can do it. I take the biggest interest in your useful and brave perpendicular journeys. You ingenious and fearless companion, Mr W. de Fontevielle, has as Mr. Victor Meunier the superior instinct of the true science. I would have the magnificent taste of the scientific adventure. Adventure in the fact, the hypothesis in the idea, here is the two big processes of discovery. Certainly, the future is for air navigation and the duty of the present is to work for the future. You are just now endorsing this duty. I, solitary person, but attentive, I am your eyes and I say to you: Courage!

— Victor Hugo, letter sent to Gaston Tissandier, 9 March 1869.

Darius was clearly of the opinion
That the air is also man's dominion,
And that, with paddle or fins or pinion,
We soon or late
Shall navigate
The azure, as now we sail the sea.

— John Townsend Trowbridge, 'Darius Greene and His Flying Machine,' 1869.
The whole poem is online

And then, the Earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet and sun from sun. The Earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the Universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds.

— Winwood Reade, 'The Martyrdom of Man,' 1872.

I suppose we shall soon travel by air-vessels; make air instead of sea voyages; and at length find our way to the Moon, in spite of the want of atmosphere.

— Lord Byron, 1882

The observed body does not, in free space, exert any force on what lies beneath it, and vice versa. Therefore, if dwellings were needed in free space, they could not — however great their size — collapse because of their instability.
Entire mountains and castles of arbitrary shape and size could keep their position in free space without any support, or any connection with a support.
There is neither up nor down, there. For example, there is no such thing as down, because 'down' is in the direction in which bodies move at accelerated speeds. . . . Just as the Moon hovers above the earth without falling down to it, so a man there can hover over a chasm which would be frightening to earthlings. He is not, of course, suspended by ropes but hovers like a bird; or rather, like a counterpoised aerostat, since he has no wings.

— Konstantin E. Tsiokovsky, Russian rocketry theorist, 'Free Space,' the first serious description of weightlessness, 1883.

Consider a cask filled with a highly compressed gas. If we open one of its taps the gas will escape through it in a continuous flow, the elasticity of the gas pushing its particles into space will continuously push the cask itself. The result will a continuous change in the motion of the cask. Given a sufficient number of taps (say, six), we would be able to regulate the outflow of the gas as we liked and the cask (or sphere) would describe any curved line in accordance with any law of velocities.

— Konstantin E. Tsiokovsky, 'Free Space,' how a rocket works in space, 1883.

Earth is the cradle of mankind, but man cannot live in the cradle forever.

— Konstantin E. Tsiokovsky

Mankind will not remain on Earth forever, but in its quest for light and space will at first timidly penetrate beyond the confines of the atmosphere, and later will conquer for itself all the space near the Sun.

— Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky

Well, gentlemen, do you believe in the possibility of aerial locomotion by machines heavier than air? . . . You ask yourselves doubtless if this apparatus, so marvellously adapted for aerial locomotion, is susceptible of receiving greater speed. It is not worth while to conquer space if we cannot devour it. I wanted the air to be a solid support to me, and it is. I saw that to struggle against the wind I must be stronger than the wind, and I am. I had no need of sails to drive me, nor oars nor wheels to push me, nor rails to give me a faster road. Air is what I wanted, that was all. Air surrounds me as water surrounds the submarine boat, and in it my propellers act like the screws of a steamer. That is how I solved the problem of aviation. That is what a balloon will never do, nor will any machine that is lighter than air.

— Jules Verne, 1886

One: There is a low limit of weight [of about] 50 pounds beyond which it is impossible for an animal to fly.
Two: The animal machine is far more effective than any we can hope to make.
Three: The weight of any machine constructed for flying, including fuel and engineer, cannot be less than three or four hundred pounds.
Is it not demonstrated that a true flying machine, self-raising, self-sustaining, self-propelling, is physically impossible?

— Professor Joseph Le Conte, University of California, 'Popular Science Monthly,' November 1888.

To set foot on the soil of the asteroids, to lift by hand a rock from the Moon, to observe Mars from a distance of several tens of kilometers, to land on its satellite or even on its surface, what can be more fantastic? From the moment of using rocket devices a new great era will begin in astronomy: the epoch of the more intensive study of the firmament.

— Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, 1896.

To the possible enquiry as to the probable character of a successful flying machine, the writer would answer that in his judgment two types of such machines may eventually be evolved: one, which may be termed the soaring type, and which will carry but a single operator, and another, likely to be developed somewhat later, which may be termed the journeying type, to carry several passengers, and to be provided with a motor.

— Octave Chanute, 'Progress in Flying Machines,' 1894.

So, may it be; let us hope that the advent of a successful flying machine, now only dimly foreseen and nevertheless thought to be possible, will bring nothing but good into the world; that it shall abridge distance, make all parts of the globe accessible, bring men into closer relation with each other, advance civilisation, and hasten the promised era in which there shall be nothing but peace and good will among all men.

— Octave Chanute, 'Progress in Flying Machines,' 1894.

It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.

— Thomas Edison, quoted in 'New York World,' 17 November 1895.

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

— Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895.

I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning, or of the expectation of good results from any of the trials we heard of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the Aeronautical Society.

— Lord Kelvin, replying to an invitation from Major B. F. S. Baden-Powell to join the Royal Aeronautical Society, 1896.

The energy necessary to propel a ship would be many times greater than that required to drive a train of cars at the same speed; hence as a means of rapid transit, flying could not begin to compete with the railroad.

— 'Popular Science' magazine, 1897.

For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. The disease has increased in severity and I feel it will soon cost me an increased amount of money, if not my life.

— Wilbur Wright, beginning of his first letter to Octave Chanute, 13 May 1900.

I am intending to start out in a few days for a trip to the coast of North Carolina . . . for the purpose of making some experiments with a flying machine. It is my belief that flight is possible, and while I am taking up the investigation for pleasure rather than profit, I think there is a slight possibility of achieving fame and fortune from it.

— Wilbur Wright, 1900.

The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which man shall fly long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be.

— Simon Newcomb, professor of mathematics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, 1901.

Few people who know of the work of Langley, Lilienthal, Pilcher, Maxim and Chanute but will be inclined to believe that long before the year 2000 A.D., and very probably before 1950, a successful aeroplane will have soared and come home safe and sound.

— H. G. Wells, 1901.

The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.

— H. G. Wells, 'The Discovery of the Future,' 1901.

But whether [the source of lift] be a rising current or something else, it is as well able to support a flying machine as a bird, if man once learns the art of utilizing it.

— Wilbur Wright, 18 September 1901

As the speed of aerial transit may reach several miles a minute man will practically be able to annihilate space and circumnavigate and explore the whole surface of this globe with independence, ease, dispatch and economy, or travel from pole to pole, or where ever his fancy may dictate, unhampered by restrictions of any kind.
While comfortable seated or reclining or standing at ease in his car, shielded from the direct effect of the wind, rain and the rays of the sun, yet having a clear and unobstructed view, often extending one hundred miles in radius, far away from the madding crowd, ignoble strife, and the busy haunts of man, and free from the noisy bustle and confusion, and the dirt, dust and bad odors of restricted and congested thoroughfares.
It is here that man as an aerial voyager, can enjoy a taste of the heavenly bliss, exhilaration of spirits and freedom from cares and anxieties such as he never before enjoyed or thought possible.

— William Edwin Irish, 'The Aerial Transit of Man,' published in Aeronautical World, 1 August 1902.

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.

— Simon Newcomb, 1902.

A day will come when beings, now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon Earth as a footstool and laugh, and reach out their hands amidst the stars.

— H. G. Wells, 1902.

Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope.

— Simon Newcomb, 1903.

The example of the bird does not prove that man can fly. Imagine the proud possessor of the aeroplane darting through the air at a speed of several hundred feet per second. It is the speed alone that sustains him. How is he ever going to stop?

— Simon Newcomb, in the Independent, 22 October 1903.

We are still far from the ultimate goal, and it would seem as if years of constant work and study by experts, together with the expenditure of thousands of dollars, would still be necessary before we can hope to produce an apparatus of practical utility on these lines.

— The U.S. War Department, in its final report on the Langley project, 1903.

I believe the new machine of the Wrights to be the most promising attempt at flight that has yet been made.

— Chanute, 23 November 1903.

We hope that Professor Langley will not put his substantial greatness as a scientist in further peril by continuing to waste his time and the money involved in further airship experiments. Life is short, and he is capable of services to humanity incomparably greater than can be expected to result from trying to fly. . . . For students and investigators of the Langley type, there are more useful employments.

— New York Times editorial page of 10 December 1903.

The machine may even carry mail is special cases. But the useful load will be very small. The machines will eventually be fast, they will be used in sport, but they are not to be thought of as commercial carriers.

— Octave Chanute, 1904.

I remember how my comrades used to tease me at our game of 'Pigeon flies!' All the children gather round a table and the leader calls out 'Pigeon flies! Hen flies! Crow flies! Bee flies!' and so on; and at each call we were supposed to raise our fingers. Sometimes, however, he would call out: 'Dog flies! Fox flies!' or some other like impossibility, to catch us. If any one raised a finger, he was made to pay a forfeit. Now my playmates never failed to wink and smile mockingly at me when one of them called 'Man flies!' for at the word I would always lift my finger very high, as a sign of absolute conviction; and I refused with energy to pay the forfeit. The more they laughed at me, the happier I was, hoping that some day the laugh would be on my side.

— A. Santos-Dumont, 'My Air-Ships,' New York, The Century Company, 1904.

All attempts at artificial aviation are not only dangerous to life but doomed to failure from an engineering standpoint.

— editor of 'The Times' of London, 1905.

It is complete nonsense to believe flying machines will ever work.

— Sir Stanley Mosley, 1905.

The air around London and other large cities will be darkened by the flight of aeroplanes. . . . They are not mere dreamers who hold that the time is at hand when air power will be an even more important thing than sea power.

— Daily Mail, 1906.

The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be united in a practicable machine by which men shall fly for long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be.

— Simon Newcomb, 1906.

All attempts at artificial aviation are not only dangerous to human life, but foredoomed to failure from the engineering standpoint.

— Engineering Editor, The Times, 1906.

It seems to me that the conquest of the air is the only major task for our generation.

— T. E. Lawrence

This fellow Charles Lindbergh will never make it. He's doomed.

— Harry Guggenheim, millionaire aviation enthusiast.

Their Lordships are of the opinion that they would not be of any practical use to the Naval Service.

— British Admiralty, in reply to the Wright's offer of patents for their airplane, 1907.

The aeroplane will never fly.

— Lord Haldane, Minister of War, Britain, 1907 (yes, 1907).

A popular fallacy is to expect enormous speed to be obtained . . . . There is no hope of competing for racing speed with either our locomotives or our automobiles.

— William Pickering, Harvard astronomer, 'Aeronautics,' 1908.

It is a bare possibility that a one-man machine without a float and favored by a wind say of fifteen miles an hour might succeed in getting across the Atlantic. But such an attempt would be the height of folly. When one comes to increase the size of the craft, the possibility rapidly fades away. This is because of the difficulties of carrying sufficient fuel . . . it will readily be seen, therefore, why the Atlantic flight is out the question.

— Orville Wright.

I do not think that a flight across the Atlantic will be made in our time, and in our time I include the youngest readers.

— Charles Stewart Rolls, co-founder of Rolls-Royce Ltd., 1908.

No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris ... [because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping.

— Orville Wright, circa 1908.

It is a bare possibility that a one-man machine without a float and favored by a wind of, say, 15 miles an hour, might succeed in getting across the Atlantic. But such an attempt would be the height of folly. When one comes to increase the size of the craft, the possibility rapidly fades away. This is because of the difficulties of carrying sufficient fuel. It will readily be seen, therefore, why the Atlantic flight is out of the question.

— Orville Wright, circa 1908.

No place is safe - no place is at peace. There is no place where a women and her daughter can hide and be at peace. The war comes through the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go out in the morning, and see air-fleets passing overhead - dripping death - dripping death!

— H. G. Wells, 'The War in the Air,' 1908.

We soon saw that the helicopter had no future, and dropped it. The helicopter does with great labor only what the balloon does without labor, and is no more fitted than the balloon for rapid horizontal flight. If its engine stops, it must fall with deathly violence, for it can neither glide like the aeroplane or float like the balloon. The helicopter is much easier to design than the aeroplane, but is worthless when done.

— Wilbur Wright, 1909.

It will take much longer [than the automobile] to make them [airplanes] familiar to everyone, yet nobody should lose sight of the fact that the Age of Flight is really here, that the man-bird is fledged at last, and already on the wing.

— Editorial in 'Outing,' 1909

In the opinion of competent experts it is idle to look for a commercial future for the flying machine. There is, and always will be, a limit to its carrying capacity.... Some will argue that because a machine will carry two people, another may be constructed that will carry a dozen, but those who make this contention do not understand the theory.

— W. J. Jackman and Thomas Russell, 'Flying Machines: Construction and Operation,' 1910.

We do not consider that aeroplanes will be of any possible use for war purposes.

— The British Secretary of State for War, 1910.

The popular mind often pictures gigantic flying machines speeding across the Atlantic, carrying innumerable passengers. It seems safe to say that such ideas must be wholly visionary. Even if such a machine could get across with one or two passengers, it would be prohibitive to any but the capitalist who could own his own yacht.

— William Pickering, Harvard astronomer, 1910.

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.

— Marshal Ferdinand Foch, professor of strategy, Ecole Superiure de Guerre, 1911.

Over cities, the aerial sentry or policeman will be found. A thousand aeroplanes flying to the opera must be kept in line and each allowed to alight upon the roof of the auditorium, in its proper turn.

— Waldemar Kaempfert, managing editor 'Scientific American,' 28 June 1913.

A new impetus was given to aviation by the relatively enormous power for weight of the atomic engine; it was at last possible to add Redmaynes's ingenious helicopter ascent and descent engine to the vertical propeller that had hitherto been the sole driving force of the aeroplane without over-weighting the machine, and men found themselves possessed of an instrument of flight that could hover or ascend or descend vertically and gently as rush wildly through the air. The last dread of fliing vanished.
As the journalists of the time phased it, this was the epoch of the Leap into the Air. The new atomic aeroplane became indeed a mania; everyone of means was frantic to possess a thing so controllable, so secure and so free from the dust and danger of the road, and in France in the year 1943 thirty thousand of these new aeroplanes were manufactured and licensed, and soared humming softly into the sky.

— H. G. Wells, 'The World Set Free,' 1914.

The aeroplane is an invention of the devil and will never play any part in such a serious business as the defence of the nation, my boy!

— Sir Sam Hughes, Canadian Minister of Militia and Defence, to J.A.D. McCurdy, who had approached the minister with the idea of starting an air service, August 1914

[Airmail was] an impractical sort of fad, and had no place in the serious job of postal transportation.

— Colonel Paul Henderson, U.S. second assistant postmaster general, 1919.

Oh well, I suppose lots of people will do it now.

— Arthur Whitten Brown, to Capt. John Alcock after they crash landed in a bog at Cliften, Ireland, after completing the first transatlantic flight, 1919.

Life, for ever dying to be born afresh, for ever young and eager, will presently stand upon this earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars.

— H. G. Wells, The Outline of History, 1920.

It is highly unlikely that an airplane, or fleet of them, could ever sink a fleet of Navy vessels under battle conditions.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1922.

The sun, the Moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago ... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.

— Havelock Ellis, 'The Dance of Life,' 1923.

Within the next few decades, autos will have folding wings that can be spread when on a straight stretch of road so that the machine can take to the air.

— Eddie Rickenbacker, 'Popular Science,' July 1924.

The aeroplane is tragically unsuited for ocean service.

— Dr Hugo Eckener, dirigible advocate, 1926.

The first real air-liner, carrying some five or six hundred passengers, will probably appear after or towards the end of the battle between fixed and moving-wing machines. And it will be a flying boat.

— Oliver Stewart, 'Aeriolus, or the Future of the Flying Machine,' 1927.

The helicopter has never achieved much success and . . .may be classes with the ornithopter as obsolete.

— Major Oliver Stewart, Royal Air Force, 1928.

Mark my word. A combination airplane and motor car is coming. You may smile. But it will come.

— Henry Ford, after pulling support for his 1926 'Sky Flivver' everyman's airplane, 1928.

Since the beginning of time, mankind has considered it as an expression of its Earthly weakness and inadequacy to be bound to the Earth, to be unable to free itself from the mysterious shackles of gravity. Not without good reason then has the concept of the transcendental always been associated with the idea of weightlessness, the power 'to be able freely to rise into the sky.' And most people even today still take it as a dogma that it is indeed unthinkable for Earthly beings ever to be able to escape the Earth. Is this point of view really justified?

However, the purpose of the present considerations is not an attempt to convince anyone that we will be able tomorrow to travel to other celestial bodies. It is only an attempt to show that traveling into outer space should no longer be viewed as something impossible for humans but presents a problem that really can be solved by technical work. The overwhelming greatness of the goal should make all the roadblocks still standing in its way appear insignificant.

—Hermann Noordung (real name Potocnik), first and last paragraphs of the groundbreaking book 'The Problem of Space Travel: The Rocket motor' (Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums: Der Raketen Motor), 1929.

This foolish idea of shooting at the Moon is an example of the absurd length to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists working in thought-tight compartments.

— Professor Bickerton, speech delivered to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1929.

Our descendants will certainly attempt journeys to other members of the solar system. . . . By 2030 the first preparations for the first attempt to reach Mars may perhaps be under consideration. The hardy individuals who form the personnel of the expedition will be sent forth in a machine propelled like a rocket.

— Lord Birkenhead, 1930

Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.

— J. G. Ballard, 1930.

It is my contention that an agent ideal to the use of the scientific militarist, for both the air raid and the long distance bombardment is now in the process of development; that its eventual perfection is but a matter of time; and its use in warfare is certain to occur. I refer to the rocket. The perfection of the rocket in my opinion will give to future warfare the horror unknown in previous conflicts and will make possible destruction of nations, in a cool, passionless and scientific fashion.

— David Lasser, 22 October 1931.

There is no hope for the fanciful idea of reaching the Moon because of insurmountable barriers to escaping the earth's gravity.

— Dr. F. R. Moulton, University of Chicago astronomer, 1932.

Scientific investigation into the possibilities [of jet propulsion] has given no indication that this method can be a serious competitor to the airscrew-engine combination. We do not consider that we should be justified in spending any time or money on it ourselves.

— The British Under-Secretary of State for Air, 1934

If there is a possibility of cosmonautics, Man will not hesitate to leave the Earth to launch himself into interplanetary space at the risk of loosing his own life.

— G. A. Crocco, at the 5th Volta Conference, 1935.

It must be states that there is not the slightest possibility of such a journey. There is not in sight any source of energy that would be a fair start toward that which would be necessary to get us beyond the gravitative control of the earth. There is no theory that would guide us through interplantary space to another world even if we could control our departure from the earth; there is no means of carrying the large amount oxygen, water, and food that would be necessary for such a long journey; and there is not known way of easing our ether ship down on the surface of another world, if we could get there.

— Professor F. R. Moulton, astronomer, 'Consider The Heavens,' University of Chicago Press 1935

Even present-day fuels possess more than enough energy, if only we knew how to release and use it. Just as molecular energy is so freely used to-day, so atomic energy may bring interplantary travel within easy reach to-morrow.

— P. E. Cleator, 'Rockets Through Space,' 1936.

The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space] . . . presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished. An analogy such as this may be misleading, and we believe it to be so in this case.

— Sir Richard van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer, reviewing P.E. Cleator's 'Rockets Through Space', in Nature, 14 March 1936

The acceleration which must result from the use of rockets . . . inevitably would damage the brain beyond repair.

— John P. Lockhard-Mummery, MA, BC, FRCS, 'After Us,' 1936.

It is about a period in aviation which is now gone, but which was probably more interesting than any the future will bring. As time passes, the perfection of machinery tends to insulate man from contact with the elements in which he lives. The 'stratosphere' planes of the future will cross the ocean without any sense of the water below. Like a train tunneling through a mountain, they will be aloof from both the problems and the beauty of the earth's surface. Only the vibration from the engines will impress the senses of the traveller with his movement through the air. Wind and heat and Moonlight take-offs will be of no concern to the transatlantic passenger. His only contact with these elements will lie in accounts such as this.

— Charles Lindbergh, foreword to 'Listen! The Wind,' 1938.

While we may invite the charge of obstructionism if we dismiss the whole affair as a wild-cat speculation, it is necessary for us to remark that, while the ratio of research results accomplished to speculative theorising is so low, little confidence can be placed in the deliberations of the British interplanetary Society.

— 'Nature,' 15 April 1939.

Using an artful tool does not make one a dry technician. It seems to me that people that are anxious about our technical advancement, confuse means and ends. Naturally a person that only works for material gain will not harvest something that is worth living for. But the machine is not an end in itself. The airplane is not an end. It is a tool. Just like the plough.

When we think that the machine will harm man, then it is perhaps because we are not yet capable of judging the rapid changes it has brought about. We hardly feel at home in this landscape of mines and power stations. We have just moved into this new home that we have not even finished yet. Everything around us has changed so fast - personal relations, working conditions, habits. Even our state of mind is in turmoil.

We are all youthful barbarians, and only our new toys bring us excitement. That has been the sole purpose of our flights. This one flies higher, that one faster. But now we will make ourselves at home. We will forget the machine, the tool. It is no longer complex; it does what it is supposed to do, unnoticed.
And through this tool we will find again the old nature, the nature of the gardener, the navigator, the poet.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 'Wind, Sand, and Stars,' 1939.

The Americans cannot build aeroplanes. They are very good at refrigerators and razor blades.

— Hermann Goering, German Air Force Minister to Hitler, 1940.

Mark my word: A combination airplane and motorcar is coming. You may smile. But it will come…

— Henry Ford, Chairman, Ford Motor Company, 1940.

In its present state, and even considering the improvements possible when adopting the higher temperatures proposed for the immediate future, the gas turbine engine could hardly be considered a feasible application to airplanes mainly because of the difficulty in complying with the stringent weight requirements imposed by aeronautics.
The present internal combustion engine equipment used in airplanes weighs about 1.1 pounds per horsepower, and to approach such a figure with a gas turbine seems beyond the realm of possibility with existing materials.

— The Committee on Gas Turbines appointed by The National Academy of Sciences, 10 June 1940. Frank Whittle has said that:

"Good thing I was too stupid to know this."

Automobiles will start to decline almost as soon as the last shot is fired in World War II. The name of Igor Sikorsky will be as wellknown as Henry Ford's, for his helicopter will all but replace the horseless carriage as the new means of popular transportation. Instead of a car in every garage, there will be a helicopter.... These 'copters' will be so safe and will cost so little to produce that small models will be made for teenage youngsters. These tiny 'copters, when school lets out, will fill the sky as the bicycles of our youth filled the prewar roads.

— Harry Bruno, aviation publicist, 1943.

Gliders... [will be] the freight trains of the air.... We can visualize a locomotive plane leaving LaGuardia Field towing a train of six gliders in the very near future. By having the load thus divided it would be practical to unhitch the glider that must come down in Philadelphia as the train flies over that place — similarly unhitching the loaded gliders for Washington, for Richmond, for Charleston, for Jacksonville, as each city is passed — and finally the air locomotive itself lands in Miami. During that process it has not had to make any intermediate landings, so that it has not had to slow down.

— Grover Loening, 1944

There has been a great deal said about a 3,00-mile high-angle rocket. The people who have been writing these things that annoy me, have been talking about a 3,000-mile high-angle rocket shot from one continent to another, carrying an atomic bomb and so directed as to be a precise weapon which would land exactly on a certain target, such as a city.
I say, technically, I don't think anyone in the world knows how to do such a thing. and I feel confident it will not be done for a very long period to come. I think we can leave that out of our thinking. I wish the American public would leave that out of their thinking.

— Dr. Vannevar Bush, President of the Carnegie Institute of Washington DC, December 1945.

If you are in trouble anywhere in the world, an airplane can fly over and drop flowers, but a helicopter can land and save your life.

— Igor Sikorsky, 1947

The moon is within reach. The trip will not be made tomorrow, but many rocket experts believe it will not be long.

— 'A Trip to the Moon and back' published in the Sacramento Bee newspaper, 13 february 1947

The most fascinating aspect of successfully launching a satellite would be the pulse quickening stimulation it would give to considerations of interplanetary travel. Whose imagination is not fired by the possibility of voyaging out beyond the limits of our earth, traveling to the Moon, to Venus and Mars? Such thoughts when put on paper now seem like idle fancy. But, a man-made satellite, circling our globe beyond the limit of the atmosphere is the first step. The other necessary steps would surely follow in rapid succession. Who would be so bold as to say that this might not come within our time?

— Louis N. Ridenour, 'RAND's Role in the Evolution of Balloon and Satellite Observation Systems and Related U.S. Space Technology,' February 1947.

The way to fly is to go straight up . . . Such a machine (the helicopter) will never compete with the aeroplane, though it will have specialized uses, and in these it will surpass the aeroplane. The fact that you can land at your front door is the reason you can't carry heavy loads efficiently.

— Emile Berliner, 1948

The choice, as Wells once said, is the Universe—or nothing. . . . The challenge of the great spaces between the worlds is a stupendous one; but if we fail to meet it, the story of our race will be drawing to its close. Humanity will have turned its back upon the still untrodden heights and will be descending again the long slope that stretches, across a thousand million years of time, down to the shores of the primeval sea.

— Arthur C. Clarke, last words of his first book, 'Interplanetary Flight,' 1950.

The younger generation of rocket engineers is just beginning. They are of the new generation to which space travel is not going to be a dream of the future but an everyday job with everyday worries in which they will be engaged.

— Willy Ley, 1951

Satellite vehicles represent a rather fearsome foresight of future wars of nerves, in which aggressive nations could put their pilotless missiles into frictionless satellite motion round the earth for all to see and fear, with the constant threat of guiding them down to a target.

— W. F. Hilton, 'High-Speed Aerodynamics,' 1952.

Science has reached such a stage that . . . the creation of an artificial satellite of the Earth is a real possibility.

— A. N. Nesmeyanov, USSR Academy of Sciences, at the World Peace Council in Vienna, 1953.

We are coming into a new era of flight, an ear in which all past conception of time and distance is changing and changing at a very, very rapid rate.

— Allan Lockheed, founder of Lockheed Aircraft, film outtake of 'we Saw it happen,' 1953.

Possibly everyone will travel by air in another fifty years. I'm not sure I like the idea of millions of planes flying around overhead. I love the sky's unbroken solitude. I don't like to think of it cluttered up by aircraft, as roads are cluttered up by cars. I feel like the western pioneer when he saw barbed-wire fence lines encroaching on his open plains. The success of his venture brought the end of the life he loved.

— Charles Lindbergh, 'The Spirit of St. Louis,' 1953.

If humans want to work in the vacuum outside their spaceships they must do it in solid walled cylinders—if they want to walk on the surface of the Moon they will have to do so by means of mechanical or leglike appendages.

— Science editor of 'Life' magazine, reporting on USAF doctors opinions, 1953.

The first men who set out for Mars had better make sure they leave everything at home in apple-pie order. They won't get back to earth for more than two and a half years. The difficulties of a trip to mars are formidable. . . . What curious information will these first explorers carry back from Mars? Nobody knows—and its extremely doubtful that anyone now living will ever know. All that can be said with certainty today is this: the trip will be made, and will be made . . . someday.

— Wernher von Braun with Cornelius Ryan, 'Can We Get to Mars?,' 1954.

The exploration of the planets is now closer to us in time than the exploration of Africa by Stanley and Livingstone.

— Arthur C. Clarke, 'The Saturday Review,' 1955.

If we were to start today on an organized and well-supported space program I believe a practical passenger rocket can be built and tested within ten years.

—Dr. Wernher von Braun, on the 'Tomorrowland' segment of TV show 'Disneyland,' 9 March 1955.

Space travel is utter bilge.

— Richard van der Riet Wooley, on assuming the post of British Astronomer Royal, lecture in London, January 1956.

In the final decade of the twenty-first century, men and women had landed on the Moon . . .

— first words of the movie 'The Forbidden Planet,' 1956.

To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the Moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth—all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.

— Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the Audion tube and a father of radio, 25 February 1957.

Space travel is bunk.

— Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of Britain, 1957, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik.

We have all the prerequisities to build an aircraft powered by an atomic engine, in the near future.

— E. P. Slavsky, chief of the Soviet atomic energy effort, reported in Flying magazine at the start of the article 'Nuclear Power for Aircraft: Though many problems still exist, the A-powered plane's future looks brighter,' June 1957.

No matter what we do now, the Russians will beat us to the Moon . . . I would not be surprised if the Russians reached the Moon within a week.

— John Rinehart, Smithsonian Institution. October 1957.

Supersonic airplanes have carried men at more than 2,000 miles per hour and there are reasons to believe that this speed will be doubled by 1960 or so.

— Igor Sikorsky, 14 January 1958.

Men who have worked together to reach the stars are not likely to descend together into the depths of war and desolation.

— Then U.S. Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, addressing the U.N. General Assembly, 1958.

I know that some knowledgeable people fear that although we might be willing to spend a couple of billion dollars in 1958, because we still remember the humiliation of Sputnik last October, next year we will be so preoccupied by color television, or new-style cars, or the beginning of another national election, that we will be unwilling to pay another year's installment on our space conquest bill. For that to happen well, I'd just as soon we didn't start.

— Hugh L. Dryden

[Before man reaches the Moon] your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or to Australia by guided missiles. . . . We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.

— Arthur E. Summerfield, AP wire report, 23 January 1959.

Flight into the Cosmos by a rocket will never be like an outing on a boat or a trip on a tram.

—Yuri Artsutanov, To the Cosmos by Electric Train, in 'Pravda,' 1960.

The first man-made satellite to orbit the earth was named Sputnik. The first living creature in space was Laika. The first rocket to the Moon carried a red flag. The first photograph of the far side of the Moon was made with a Soviet camera. If a man orbits the earth this year his name will be Ivan

— Then U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy, in an issue of 'Missiles and Rockets' (actually written by Edward O. Welsh), 1960.

But does Man have any 'right' to spread through the universe? Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics, you name it, is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what man is, not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be. The Universe will let us know - later - whether or not Man has any "right" to expand through it.

— Robert A. Heinlein, 'Starship Troopers,' 1960.

The greatest advance in aviation since the Wright Brothers.

— The New York Times, 1961. A much over used phrase, used here to describe the start of the Eastern Air-Shuttle between New York and Washington.

The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a "C," the idea must be feasible.

— A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. Fred Smith later started FedEx. 1965. In a 'Fortune' magazine interview on their website, Fred says that:

"Today that paper is kind of famous, and it's because of a careless comment I once made. I was asked what grade I got on it, and I stupidly said, 'I guess I got my usual gentlemanly C.' That stuck, and it's become a well-known story because everybody likes to flout authority. But to be honest, I don't really remember what grade I got. I probably didn't get a very good one, though, because it wasn't a well-thought-out paper."

The V/STOL aircraft has been to the transport industry just as girls are to a young boy. In both cases very attractive features can be recognized in this new object of interest but the way in which advantage could be taken of them is not at all clear. Just as the boy learns eventually that success is achieved through a sophisticated and often expensive approach to the problem, so the V/STOL user has finally realized that a simple cheap approach will not lead to success. In both cases substantial satisfaction should follow successful solution to the problem.

— C. W. Harper, NASA, Flight Safety Foundation Newsletter, November 1966.

The creative conquest of space will serve as a wonderful substitute for war.

— James S. McDonnell, 'Time,' 31 March 1967.

Nothing will stop us. The road to the stars is steep and dangerous. But we're not afraid . . . Space flights can't be stopped. This isn't the work of one man or even a group of men. It is a historical process which mankind is carrying out in accordance with the natural laws of human development.

— Yuri Gagarin, regards the first death in space (Vladimir Komarov), 1967.

I know that some knowledgeable people fear that although we might be willing to spend a couple of billion dollars in 1958, because we still remember the humiliation of Sputnik last October, next year we will be so preoccupied by color television, or new-style cars, or the beginning of another national election, that we will be unwilling to pay another year's installment on our space conquest bill. For that to happen well, I'd just as soon we didn't start.

— Hugh L. Dryden

The ability to carry out scientific observations at a distance is developing so rapidly that I don't see any unique role for man in planetary exploration.

— Gordon MacDonald, National Academy of Sciences, 1968.

By the year 2000 we will undoubtedly have a sizable operation on the Moon, we will have achieved a manned Mars landing and it's entirely possible we will have flown with men to the outer planets.

— Dr. Wernher von Braun, 1969.

There are flying grandfathers. But I intend to be an orbiting grandfather.

— Dr. Wernher von Braun, 20 July 1969.

The Post-Apollo manned space flight program is focusing on a 100-man Earth-orbiting station with a multiplicity of capabilities varying from development of earth resources to astronomy. . . . The schedule under consideration contemplates a launch of the first module of the large space station, with perhaps as many as 12 men, by 1975. Using the concept of modularity, NASA's advanced manned mission planners for see the gradual, incremental buildup of the initial station to a large base accommodating 100 men by 1980.

— Aviation Week & Space Technology, 24 February 1969.

It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and reality of tomorrow.

— Robert Goddard

As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the Moon that one begins to doubt ... for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react ... Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.

— New York Times Editorial, 13 January 1920.

Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century, and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.

— The New York Times, 17 July 1969.

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.

— Arthur C. Clarke, in the 'New Yorker' magazine, 9 August 1969.

One day the stars will be as familiar to each man as the landmarks, the curves, and the hills on the road that leads to his door, and one day that will be an airborne life.

— Beryl Markham, 'West With The Night.'

My friends they were dancing here in the streets of Huntsville when our first satellite orbited the Earth. They were dancing again when the first Americans landed on the Moon. I'd like to ask you, don't hang up your dancing slippers.

— Dr. Wernher von Braun

Many people are shrinking from the future and from participation in the movement toward a new, expanded reality. And, like homesick travelers abroad, they are focusing their anxieties on home. The reasons are not far to seek. We are at a turning point in human history. . . . We could turn our attention to the problems that going to the Moon certainly will not solve ... But I think this would be fatal to our future. . . . A society that no longer moves forward does not merely stagnate; it begins to die.

— Margaret Mead, Man on the Moon, 'Redbook' Magazine, 1969.

In all the history of mankind there will be only one generation which will be the first to explore the solar system, one generation for which, in childhood the planets are distant and indistinct discs moving through the night, and for which in old age the planets are places, diverse new worlds in the course of exploration. There will be a time in our future history when the solar system will be explored and inhabited by men who will be looking outward toward the first trip to the stars. To them and to all who come after us, the present moment will be a pivotal instant in the history of mankind.

— Carl Sagan, London lecture at Eugene, Oregon, 1970.

Future growth potential looks unlimited . . . one gross weight doubling, and possibly two, is predicted by 1985; nuclear power can drive [the C-5A's] optimum weight to 5 or 10 million pounds before the year 2000.

— F. A. Cleveland, 1970.

A very friendly boom, like a pair of gleeful handclaps.

— Sir James Lighthill, UK government scientific advisor regards Concorde supersonic noise profile, 1971.

The new engines are far quieter than the prototypes, People living near the airports will hardly notice the aircraft.

— Henry Marking, British Airways, regards Concorde, 1975.

Every civilization [in the universe] must go through this [a nuclear crisis]. Those that don't make it destroy themselves. Those that do make it end up cavorting all over the universe.

— Ted Taylor, quoted by John McPhee in 'The Curve of Binding Energy,' 1974.

More important than the material issue . . . the opening of a new, high frontier will challenge the best that is in us . . . the new lands waiting to be built in space will give us new freedom to search for better governments, social systems, and ways of life . . .

— Gerard K. O'Neill, 'The High frontier,' 1976.

But the airplane's potential would not — in fact, could not — be realized by a community of businessmen acting alone. The Federal Government would stand at their side, becoming, in effect, civil aviation's indispensable partner. The partnership flourishes to this day.

— Nick A. Komons, FAA Historian, 'Bonfires to Beacons,' 1977.

We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.

— President Jimmy Carter, 1977.

The shuttle tomorrow is truly like laying the last spike on the transcontinental railroad, only much more so. And whether or not we're going to see in in the next 10 or 20 years, there are people alive today who will see manufacturing in space from moon materials or from asteroids.

— Jerry Brown, Governor of California, 1977

As chairman of the Senate subcommittee responsible for NASA appropriations, I say not a penny for this nutty fantasy.

— Senator William Proxmire, 1977.

The frontier in space, embodied in the space colony, is one in which the interactions between humans and their environment is so much more sensitive and interactive and less tolerant of irresponsibility than it is on the whole surface of the Earth. We are going to learn how to relate to the Earth and our own natural environment here by looking seriously at space colony ecologies.

— Astronaut Rusty Schweickart, in 'L-5 News,' 1977.

Before another century is done it will be hard for people to imagine a time when humanity was confined to one world, and it will seem to them incredible that there was ever anybody who doubted the value of space and wanted to turn his or her back on the Universe.

— Isaac Asimov, 1979.

In the wide and starry band of near-earth space, beginning about 200 miles up and extending to 22,300 miles, where a satellite can be placed in stationary orbit rotating in unison with the earth . . . [there is] the possibility of an industrial bonanza. Operating in this pure and virtually gravity-free environment, factories could produce novel materials worth as much as $30,000 a pound back here on earth. . . . No corporation affected by changes in technology can afford to ignore the new era of innovation that is about to begin.

— Gene Bylinsky, 'Fortune' magazine, 29 January 1979.

Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving.

— Gene Roddenberry, airplanetary Report Vol. 1,' 1981.

Centuries hence, when current social and political problems may seem as remote as the problems of the Thirty Years' War are to us, our age may be remembered chiefly for one fact: It was the time when the inhabitants of the earth first made contact with the vast cosmos in which their small planet is embedded.

— Carl Sagan

It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy's edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create "one world." Instead of one world, we have "star wars," and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet's dead.

— Gore Vidal, Armageddon, 'On Flying,' sct. 3, 1987.

When the history of our galaxy is written, and for all any of us know it may already have been, if Earth gets mentioned at all it won't be because its inhabitants visited their own Moon. That first step, like a newborn's cry, would be automatically assumed. What would be worth recording is what kind of civilization we earthlings created and whether or not we ventured out to other parts of the galaxy.

— Astronaut Michael Collins, 'Liftoff,' 1988.

Our goal: To place Americans on Mars and to do it within the working lifetimes of scientists and engineers who will be recruited for the effort today. And just as Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to open the continent, our commitment to the Moon/Mars initiative will open the Universe. It's the opportunity of a lifetime, and offers a lifetime of opportunity.

— President George Bush, 2 February 1990.

Many, and some of the most pressing, of our terrestrial problems can be solved only by going into space. Long before it was a vanishing commodity, the wilderness as the preservation of the world was proclaimed by Thoreau. In the new wilderness of the Solar System may lie the future preservation of mankind.

— Arthur C. Clarke, 'What Is to Be Done?' in 'Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,' 1992.

I was sure we'd go into space; sure we'd go to the Moon and planets; but I didn't really believe I'd live to see it. Or live to see it finished! That's something I never would have dreamed of: that we would go to the Moon, and abandon it after five years! . . . . You can't make much of a case for man in space until you've got efficient and reliable propulsion systems. Once we've got that, everything else will follow automatically. It only costs about a hundred dollars to go to the Moon - in terms of kilowatt hours, if you were to buy the energy from your friendly local power station. Whereas it costs about a billion dollars the way we've done it. . . . There's no reason why, in the next century, it should cost more to go to the Moon than it costs to fly around the world today.

— Arthur C. Clarke, 'Wired' magazine interview July/August 1993.

History will remember the twentieth century for two technological developments: atomic energy and space flight.

— Neil Armstrong, 1994.

We want to build colonies on the Moon, Mars, the Moons of other planets, and even nearby asteroids. We want to make space tourism and commerce routine.

— Daniel S. Goldin, NASA administrator, 1995.

Soon there will be no one who remembers when spaceflight was still a dream, the reverie of reclusive boys and the vision of a handful of men.

— Wyn Wachhorst, 1995.

Flight out of the atmosphere is a simple thing to do and should have been available to the public twenty years ago. Ten years from now, we will have space tourism where you will be able to see the black sky and the curvature of the earth. It will be the most exciting roller coaster ride you can buy.

— Burt Rutan, in an interview with Design News, 1996.

Market studies suggest space tourism—a rubbernecker's trip to earth orbit—is likely to draw 50,000 passengers a year if the ticket can be pushed below $25,000. That's what tens of thousands of people spend each year on competing trips, such as round-the-world cruises on luxury liners and adventure tours to Antarctica or Mount Everest.

— G. Harry Stine, Editorial Commentary, 'Barron's' 21 Oct 1996.

There are no practical alternatives to air transportation.

— Daniel S. Goldin, NASA Administrator, 20 March 1997.

Today the human race is a single twig on the tree of life, a single species on a single planet. Our condition can thus only be described as extremely fragile, endangered by forces of nature currently beyond our control, our own mistakes, and other branches of the wildly blossoming tree itself. Looked at this way, we can then pose the question of the future of humanity on Earth, in the solar system, and in the galaxy from the standpoint of both evolutionary biology and human nature. The conclusion is straightforward: Our choice is to grow, branch, spread and develop, or stagnate and die.

— Robert Zubrin, 'Entering Space,' 1999.

A few million years ago there were no humans. Who will be here a few million years hence? In all the 4.6-billion-year history of our planet, nothing much ever left it. But now, tiny unmanned exploratory spacecraft from Earth are moving, glistening and elegant, through the solar system. We have made a preliminary reconnaissance of twenty worlds, among them all of the planets visible to the naked eye, all those wandering nocturnal lights that stirred our ancestors toward understanding and ecstasy. If we survive, our time will be famous for two reasons: that at this dangerous moment of technological adolescence we managed to avoid self-destruction; and because this is the epoch in which we began our journey to the stars.

— Carl Sagan, 'Cosmos'.

It is the last day, barring unforeseen circumstances, that we will not have a human presence in space.

— Richard LaBrode, U.S. flight director for the International Space Station, at mission control outside Moscow, 31 October, 2000.

From our descendents' perches on other plants or distant space cities, they will look back at our achievement with wonder at our courage and audacity and with appreciation of our accomplishments, which assured the future in which they live.

— Walter Cronkite, 2000.

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!

— Larry Niven, quoted by Arthur Clarke in interview online at space.com, 2001.

I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.

— Stephen Hawking, interview in 'The Daily Telegraph,' 2001.

Eventually everyone will have the opportunity to travel onto space.

— Lance Bass, member of boy-band *N Sync and world's wanna-be third space tourist, reported in 'The New York Times,' 30 Aug 2002.

The Moon is ripe for commercial development. It's a lot closer than you think, at least in travel time, which is four days. . . . People will soon get to experience the Moon in ways they never imagined.

— Dennis Laurie, President of TransOrbital, first private company approved by the U.S. government to land on the Moon. 9 September 2002.

The question to ask is whether the risk of traveling to space is worth the benefit. The answer is an unequivocal yes, but not only for the reasons that are usually touted by the space community: the need to explore, the scientific return, and the possibility of commercial profit. The most compelling reason, a very long-term one, is the necessity of using space to protect Earth and guarantee the survival of humanity.

— William E. Burrows, 'The Wall Street Journal,' 2003.

Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth. . . . Will this happen before our technological civilization disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it forever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos.

— Martin Rees, England's Astronomer Royal, 'Our Final Hour,' 2003.

A lot of people think that all the things that could be invented have been invented. But we are just on the frontier of discovery and invention. It's a very exciting time.

— XCOR rocket plane test pilot Dick Rutan, 2003 television interview.

In my view it will not be long before space becomes a battleground.

— Lieutenant General Edward Anderson, deputy commander of US Northern Command, hours after China became the third country after the US and the former Soviet Union to put a man in space. 15 October 2003.

In time, [a Martian] colony would grow to the point of being self- sustaining. When this stage was reached, humanity would have a precious insurance policy against catastrophe at home. During the next millennium there is a significant chance that civilization on Earth will be destroyed by an asteroid, a killer plague or a global war. A Martian colony could keep the flame of civilization and culture alive until Earth could be reverse-colonized from Mars.

— Paul Davies, 'The New York Times,' 2004.

We'll go into orbit. We'll go to the Moon. This business has no limits.

— Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic, reported in 'Wired' magazine January 2005.

We will return to the Moon no later than 2020 and extend human presence across the Solar System and beyond.

— Dr Michael Griffin, NASA administrator, saying that four astronauts would be sent in a new space vehicle as part of a project projected at $104 billion, 19 September 2005.

There will be a new industry, and we are just now in the beginning. I will predict that in twelve or fifteen years there will be tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people, that fly and see that black sky.

— Bert Rutan, regards space tourism market, '60 Minutes' TV interview broadcast 1 January 2006.

One day . . . there will be more humans living off the Earth than on it.

— Mike Griffin, NASA administrator, 'Rolling Stone' magazine, 23 February 2006.

In a relatively short period of time -- maybe 15 to 20 years -- I believe we're going to fly hypersonic and we'll look at SSBJs [supersonic business jets] as not having been a necessary intermediate stop. We'll bounce across the top of the atmosphere at Mach 5-6 or do suborbital lobs flying weightless. Travel time may be reduced to as little as 60 minutes anywhere on Earth.
Within 25 years, virtual reality meetings will be essentially transparent to being there in person. Once we can do this, the idea of climbing into an aircraft, and burning up huge quantities of fossil fuels to propel our bodies and briefcases full of papers, will seem absolutely backward.

— Bert Rutan, interview in 'Professional Pilot' magazine, March 2006.

Space tourism will be a significant portion of the overall travel and tourism industry over the next 20 to 25 years.

— Eric Anderson, Chief Executive Officer of Space Adventures, 21 March 2006.

Space travel will be like every other business. There will be competitors. . . . Thirty months from now, I'm confident we'll be flying people into space.

— Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic. Interview in 'Men's Journal.' May 2006.

It's really incumbent upon us as life's agents to extend life to another planet. I think that being a multi-planet species will significantly increase the richness and scope of the human experience.

— Elon Musk, founder of XpaceX, interview in 'Ad Astra', Summer 2006.

We hope to create thousands of astronauts over the next few years and bring alive their dream of seeing the majestic beauty of our planet from above, the stars in all their glory and the amazing sensations of weightlessness and space flight.

— Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic. Interview in 'adAstra.' Fall 2006.

To our knowledge, life exists on only one planer, Earth. If something bad happens, it's gone. I think we should establish life on another planet -- Mars in particular -- but we 're not making very good progress. SpaceX is intended to make that happen.

— Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, 'Time' 5 March 2007.

During the next 50 years, in countless cycles, in countless entrepreneurial companies, this "let's just go and do it" mentality will help us finally get off the planet and irreversibly open the space frontier. The capital and tools are finally being placed into the hands of those willing to risk, willing to fail, willing to follow the dreams."

— Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman of the X-Prize Foundation, 'The Next 50 Years In Space,' 'Aviation Week' online 14 March 2007.

There are so many benefits to be derived from space exploration and exploitation; why not take what seems to me the only chance of escaping what is otherwise the sure destruction of all that humanity has struggled to achieve for 50,000 years?

— Isaac Asimov, speech at Rutgers University.

All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.

— Carl Sagan, 'Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space'.