Alan Stern Wonderful Quotes

Alan Stern Wonderful Quotese

There was a time when Pluto - which NASA's New Horizons spacecraft at last explored in 2015, a mission I led - was considered the last planet. We now know there are thousands of other - possibly inhabited - planets.

— Alan Stern

It is only by freeing NASA from routine human transport to low-Earth orbit that we can afford to once again see American astronauts exploring distant worlds.

— Alan Stern

I can't imagine how many kids around the world will look at pictures of Pluto and think, 'I want to grow up to be a scientist.'

— Alan Stern

You could not have predicted the amazing discoveries at Pluto, even though we have been to a couple of objects in the solar system that were at least a little analogous to Pluto.

— Alan Stern

Whether there's even an ocean on Pluto deep inside is a question I hope New Horizons can address in indirect ways.

— Alan Stern

Just because Pluto or comets aren't as big as Jupiter doesn't mean they are not scientifically important - indeed, just the reverse is often true. Sometimes, great things come in small packages.

— Alan Stern

In the mind of the public, the word 'planet' carries a significance lacking in other words used to describe planetary bodies... many members of the public assume that alleged 'non-planets' cease to be interesting enough to warrant scientific exploration.

— Alan Stern

That so many binary or quasi-binary KBOs exist came as a real surprise to the research community.

— Alan Stern

As a planetary scientist, I don't know what else to call Pluto: It's big and round and thousands of miles wide.

— Alan Stern

I tend to think of Pluto and its moons as presents sitting under a Christmas tree. They're wrapped, and from Earth all we can do is look at the boxes to see whether they're light or heavy, to see if something maybe jiggles a bit inside. We're seeing intriguing things, but we really don't know what's in there.

— Alan Stern

As a scientist in charge of space sensors and entire space missions before I was at NASA, I myself was involved in projects that overran. But that's no excuse for remaining silent about this growing problem or failing to champion reform.

— Alan Stern

Science doesn't work by voting. Did people vote on the theory of relativity? No! It's either right or it's wrong. Do we vote on whether genetics is a good theory or not? Of course not.

— Alan Stern

Are governments the only entities that can build human spacecraft? No - actually, every human spacecraft ever built for NASA was built by private industry.

— Alan Stern

Just speaking for myself, I think the return of people to the Moon has a lot to offer for understanding the formation and evolution of terrestrial worlds; so would the exploration of near-Earth asteroids by people.

— Alan Stern

Why would you listen to an astronomer about a planet?

— Alan Stern

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