Leland Melvin Quotes

No matter what happens in our lives, we have to keep moving forward,” I told them. “We have to keep doing our best, no matter what the circumstances. It is about your heart, dedication, and spirit.

My experiences in the Astronaut Corps had taught me that you never know what will happen from day to day. It’s best to experience life as fully as possible while you have the time, health, and opportunity. •

When you look at the Earth from the vantage point of space, our planet looks like a little blue marble. Seeing our world from that vantage point cognitively changes you. My orbital shift happened after breaking bread with my space station crewmates and my shuttle crewmates. it showed me how close we are as countries, as races, as a species. I marveled that on Earth we have all these distances and separations and geographic boundaries, but they vanish quickly in the weightless interior of the space station.

Seeing the world without geographic boundaries really puts things in perspective and makes one wonder why there is so much division, hatred, and malice. We

As astronauts we’re trained not to be alarmed by things. We’re trained to ask, “How will I fix this? How will I do all the steps required to make sure that we come home safely?” Surprises

To walk on the beach was the most incredible thing. When you look at the horizon it helps regauge your gyros and your inner ear. It helps you know exactly what’s up and down and what’s right and left.

My experiences in the Astronaut Corps had taught me that you never know what will happen from day to day. It's best to experience life as fully as possible while you have the time, health and opportunity.

As a scientist, I know that predicting outcomes is based as much on probability as on cause and effect. It isn’t always possible to isolate the one factor that led to a particular result. Still, as I stepped forward to receive my award, I couldn’t help rethinking, however briefly, my journey backward through time, from an NFL event in Maui, through two missions on the space station, to a football field at Heritage High. It had all begun with a dropped pass. In

When you look at the Earth from the vantage point of space, our planet looks like a little blue marble. Seeing our world from that vantage point cognitively changes you. My orbital shift happened after breaking bread with my space station crewmates and my shuttle crewmates. It showed me how close we are as countries, as races, as a species. I marveled that on Earth we have all these distances and separations and geographic boundaries, but they vanish quickly in the weightless interior of the space station. I’d

It seems I have been chasing goals placed before me - the NFL, a career in engineering, and now a space station orbiting high above the Earth.

When the main engines cut off, I felt I was no longer chasing space. I had arrived. I had made it to that spacious habitation, the phrase that came to mind when I first looked down from space and saw our home, the Earth. A reporter asked me after the Atlantis mission what was it like to be up there. I initially spoke about floating and seeing things that weren’t attached to anything in the shuttle floating around us. The talk quickly turned to that magnificent view of Earth. I saw the planet for the first time without borders. I thought about all the places on Earth where there’s unrest and war, and here we were flying above all that, working together as one team to help advance our civilization. That

We have setbacks and we have comebacks.

Consider that NASA invests tens of millions of dollars to train a single astronaut. And these days, until we have an alternative, the United States pays Russia at least $80 million for each seat on a Soyuz rocket to taxi astronauts to the International Space Station.

A brilliant black thinker, he grew up in South Carolina, where someone called the police when young Ron tried to check out a science book from the segregated library in his town. Once the police officer arrived, he saw Ron’s determination to learn and was so moved that he checked out the book for Ron. A

When the main engines cut off, I felt I was no longer chasing space. I had arrived.