21 quotes from the Apollo 11 astronauts on everything from walking on the moon to the future of spaceflight

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Posted on July 18, 2020 7:36 am in All Neat-o

21 quotes from the Apollo 11 astronauts on everything from walking on the moon to the future of spaceflight (businessinsider.com)

Astronaut Neil Armstrong smiles inside the Lunar Module July 20, 1969.

Half a century ago, on July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts took off for the moon.

Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins arrived four days later to a place no human being had ever been before.

Collins orbited the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin landed on its surface. It took them hours to put on their space suits and prep for touchdown. After descending the ladder onto the lunar surface, Armstrong uttered his historic words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” (Armstrong would later claim, “‘That’s one small step for ‘a’ man.’ It’s just that people just didn’t hear it.”)

The 600 million people watching the moon landing on television would remember that line. But the three astronauts had much more to say about their experience flying to the moon and back.

Here are the astronauts’ most memorable words.

Neil Armstrong on vision

Neil Armstrong
Astronaut Neil Armstrong smiles inside the Lunar Module July 20, 1969.
NASA via Getty Images

“There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truth’s protective layers. There are places to go beyond belief.”

Source: United Press International

Buzz Aldrin on dreams

Buzz Aldrin

NASA/AP

“One truth I have discovered for sure: When you believe that all things are possible and you are willing to work hard to accomplish your goals, you can achieve the next ‘impossible’ dream. No dream is too high!”

Source: “No Dream is Too High: Life Lessons From a Man Who Walked on the Moon”

Buzz Aldrin on keeping an open mind

apollo 11 astronauts

NASA/AP

“Your mind is like a parachute: If it isn’t open, it doesn’t work.”

Source: “No Dream is Too High: Life Lessons From a Man Who Walked on the Moon”

Neil Armstrong on challenges (answered during Apollo 11’s pre-flight news conference)

Neil Armstrong Getty final

Getty

“I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul … we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.”

Source: Internet Archive

Michael Collins on liftoff

apollo 11 training
Apollo 11 command module pilot astronaut Michael Collins during a break in training for the July 1969 moon landing journey in Cape Kennedy, Florida, June 19, 1969. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin Jr., took a walk on the lunar surface, while Collins circled alone in moon orbit.
AP Photo

“We are off! And do we know it, not just because the world is yelling ‘Liftoff’ in our ears, but because the seats of our pants tell us so! Trust your instruments, not your body, the modern pilot is always told, but this beast is best felt. Shake, rattle and roll!”

Source: “Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys”

Buzz Aldrin on weightlessness

astronaut buzz aldrin apollo 11 moon mission spacesuit helmet portrait nasa s69_31743
Buzz Aldrin poses in an Apollo 11 spacesuit in July 1969, just days before launching toward the first human landing on the moon.
NASA

“There’s a tremendously satisfying freedom associated with weightlessness. It’s challenging in the absence of traction or leverage, and it requires thoughtful readjustment. I found the experience of weightlessness to be one of the most fun and enjoyable, challenging and rewarding, experiences of spaceflight. Returning to Earth brings with it a great sense of heaviness, and a need for careful movement. In some ways it’s not too different from returning from a rocking ocean ship.”

Source: Scholastic

Neil Armstrong after landing on the moon

apollo 11 lunar module eagle

Public Domain

“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

Source: NASA

Neil Armstrong’s first words on the moon

apollo 11 neil armstrong

NASA/AP

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Source: NASA

Neil Armstrong on his famous quote

Buzz Aldrin Moon Apollo 11
Astronaut Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. poses for a photograph beside the US flag deployed on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969
AP Photo/NASA/Neil A. Armstrong

“I thought, well, when I step off it’s just going to be a little step — a step from there down to there — but then I thought about all those 400,000 people who had given me the opportunity to make that step and thought it’s going to be a big something for all those folks and, indeed for a lot of others that weren’t even involved in the project, so it was kind of a simple correlation.”

Source: CBS News

Neil Armstrong on his moonwalk

apollo 11 footprint nasa

NASA

“Pilots take no special joy in walking: pilots like flying. Pilots generally take pride in a good landing, not in getting out of the vehicle.”

Source: “In the Shadow of the Moon”

Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface

Apollo 11

NASA

“Magnificent desolation.”

Source: “Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon”

Neil Armstrong on the lunar surface

Neil Armstrong Buzz Aldrin Space Astronaut Moon Landing
Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. walks on the surface of the moon, July 30, 1969, with seismogaphic equipment which he just set up. The flag like object on a pole is a solar wind experiment and in the background is the Lunar Landing Module.
AP Photo/NASA/Neil Armstrong

“It’s an interesting place to be. I recommend it.”

Source: CBS News

Michael Collins on looking down at Earth

apollo 11 crew laughing in quarantine

NASA

“I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of, let’s say 100,000 miles, their outlook would be fundamentally changed. The all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument suddenly silenced.”

Source: Michael Collins on Twitter

Michael Collins on orbiting the moon alone

apollo 11

Project Apollo Archive

“I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side.”

Source: “Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys”

Buzz Aldrin on looking back at Earth

apollo 11

NASA

“From the distance of the moon, Earth was four times the size of a full moon seen from Earth. It was a brilliant jewel in the black velvet sky. Yet it was still at a great distance, considering the challenges of the voyage home.”

Source: Scholastic

Buzz Aldrin on being the second man on the moon

“As the senior crew member, it was appropriate for [Armstrong] to be the first. But after years and years of being asked to speak to a group of people and then be introduced as the second man on the moon, it does get a little frustrating. Is it really necessary to point out to the crowd that somebody else was first when we all went through the same training, we all landed at the same time and all contributed? But for the rest of my life I’ll always be identified as the second man to walk on the moon. [Laughs.]”

Source: National Geographic

Buzz Aldrin on returning to space

“Everyone who’s been in space would, I’m sure, welcome the opportunity for a return to the exhilarating experiences there. For me, a flight in a shuttle, though most satisfying, would be anticlimactic after my flight to the moon.”

Source: Scholastic

Neil Armstrong on being an engineer

apollo 11 astronauts

NASA/Reuters

“I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer — born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow.”

Source: National Academy of Engineering

Michael Collins on Mars

“I see more moon missions as delaying Mars, which is a much more interesting place to go.”

Source: United Press International

Neil Armstrong on lunar bases

apollo 11 astronauts

Alex Brandon/AP

“Oh, I am quite certain that we will have such bases in our lifetime, somewhat like the Antarctic stations and similar scientific outposts — continually manned. Although, certainly there is the problem of the environment, the vacuum, the high and low temperatures of day and night. Still, in all, in many ways, it’s more hospitable than Antarctica might be.”

Source: BBC interview via Business Insider

Buzz Aldrin on exploration

apollo 11 astronauts

NASA/AP

“The urge to explore has propelled evolution since the first water creatures reconnoitered the land. Like all living systems, cultures cannot remain static; they evolve or decline. They explore or expire.”

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