Google the name Prometheus, and see how often it has been given to innovations in many different fields, notably science, medicine and space exploration. The fire he stole can be seen, too, as the spark generating all artistic creativity.

Bringing an asteroid back to Earth? What's that have to do with space exploration? If we were moving outward from there, and an asteroid is a good stopping point, then fine. But now it's turned into a whole planetary defense exercise at the cost of our outward exploration.

In the 19th Century people were looking for the Northwest Passage. Ships were lost and brave people were killed, but that doesn't mean we never went back to that part of the world again, and I consider it the same in space exploration.

It cannot be right in a world of increasing human progress - whether in medicine, space exploration or renewable energy - that so many people are denied the most basic human rights.

A lot of the films I like are more than fantasies - they're movies fascinated by the technology of space exploration, and they try to honor the laws of physics. I watched the Gregory Peck movie 'Marooned' over and over when I was a kid.

The expansion of commercial space exploration holds huge promise and benefits for our country. It will help support government-backed research and programs, provide a platform to conduct cutting edge research, and lend inspiration to the next generation of engineers, scientists, artists and mathematicians.

We'd never have got a chance to go outside and look at the earth if it hadn't been for space exploration and NASA.

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.

I believe we need a more opportunistic and democratic approach to lunar exploration, now that we're shifting from U.S. government-sponsored space exploration to private expeditions.

I stayed in the astronaut program until 1993. People ask me why I left. I thought I had a lot of things to contribute that would be difficult to do if I stayed. I thought I could have a stronger voice as an advocate for space exploration. So I ended up starting my own technology consulting company.

NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world's premier space exploration agency, and we are well served by politicians working to keep it that way, instead of turning it into a mere jobs program, or worse, cutting its budget.

Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.

NSS is delighted to support the New Horizons mission by helping to share this exciting milestone in space exploration with the general public in America and around the world.

I've always been a fan of space exploration, and I filled our entire office with space artifacts.

Is manned space exploration important? Yes - not least because it simply works much better than sending robots.

People make their own fates, and if enough of us make our fate to be space explorers, perhaps we can actually get some space exploration done.

If you want a nation to have space exploration ambitions, you've got to send humans.

I am very much against weapons in space. And I wish we could be spearheading that program to come to some kind of international agreement so that doesn't happen. That is my only - fear - in further space exploration like always, we hope it doesn't get abused.

We're in the space exploration business, and the outer solar system is a wild, wooly place. We haven't explored it very well.

I'm really hopeful about the future of space exploration and human spaceflight. Civilization as we know it has been defined by exploration. You know, we need to go off and find out what's around the next corner and what's just beyond what we already know. It's part of our being; it's part of our moral fiber to go off and explore.