Gene Cernan Quotes

Author Image

Gene Cernan

Profession : Astronaut

Birth : March 14, 1934

Get the shuttle out of the garage. It's in its prime of its life. How could we just put it away?

Gene Cernan

Today, we are on a path of decay. We are seeing the book close on five decades of accomplishment as the leader in human space exploration.

Gene Cernan

I hold the world speed record downhill, in a Rover. I think it was 17 kilometers per hour, downhill.

Gene Cernan

We went into darkness after being in daylight the whole time on the way to the Moon. And then we went into darkness. And we're in the shadow... of the Moon.

Gene Cernan

Neil Armstrong was probably one of the most human guys I've ever known in my life.

Gene Cernan

NASA has been scattered to the four winds.

Gene Cernan

I'm quite disappointed that I'm still the last man on the moon.

Gene Cernan

Some of the most exciting space education in the country is not coming out of Washington or New York or California or even Texas. It's coming from a place in Kansas called the Cosmosphere.

Gene Cernan

People try to typecast astronauts as heroic and superhuman. We're only human beings.

Gene Cernan

Perhaps the two greatest moments of my life were standing on the moon and being outside of the room when my granddaughter was born! We tend not to remember the worst.

Gene Cernan

We will certainly see teachers, journalists, artists and poets in space. Whatever it takes to the be the best is what it will take to get you into space.

Gene Cernan

I do believe there is life in outer space. Mathematically, there has to be, and if you believe as I do that there is a creator of the universe, then how can we be so arrogant to believe he created life here and nowhere else?

Gene Cernan

Chemical propulsion is obsolete to go anywhere other than the moon. Three days - that's acceptable. But for Mars, we need propulsion technologies to get us there in, say, 60 days - then spend whatever length of time we want to spend and return when we want to come home.

Gene Cernan

I was a child of World War Two . I saw films of pilots taking off from aircraft carriers and decided that was the only thing I wanted to do. And it had to be flying from sea carriers. Airfields were not enough.

Gene Cernan

Some astronauts describe the routine flushing of urine into space, where the freezing temperatures turn the droplets into a cloud of bright, drifting crystals, as being among the most amazing sights they saw on an entire voyage.

Gene Cernan