James Van Allen Quotes (6 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

James Van Allen: 6 quotes 0 likes

Famous James Van Allen Quotes

“As soon as we started looking at them, we saw the most remarkable situation. My first thought was, "Great guns! Something's gone wrong with the apparatus!" But then we got later North American tapes and everything seemed normal again.”

James Van Allen

On the first results from Explorer I, Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

“I was a kind of a one-man army. I could solder circuits together, I could turn out things on the lathe, I could work with rockets and balloons. I'm a kind of a hybrid between an engineer and a physicist and astronomer.”

James Van Allen

On his early career, "Grounded in Space Science", Interview with Rushworth M. Kidder, The Christian Science Monitor, page 14, December 22, 1989.

“After a vast research program, which depended very heavily upon the use of a number of highspeed computers, I am pleased to offer you the result: "Space is that in which everything else is." In other words, "Space is the hole that we are in."”

James Van Allen

On the definition of space: Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

“A man is a fabulous nuisance in space right now. He's not worth all the cost of putting him up there and keeping him comfortable and working.”

James Van Allen

On men in space, Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

“All this is very good in theory, but in practice, you take a piece of iron, wind a wire around it, then plug the wire in. The core gets hot, the wires smoke, and the fuse blows. So you see, there are practical limitations to theory.”

James Van Allen

Comments to an undergraduate physics class about transformers, Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

“Apparently, something happens on the sun. It sends out a burst of gases. The reservoirs above our earth shake like a bowl of jelly. The radiation droozles out at the ends and makes the auroral displays at the North and South Poles.”

James Van Allen

On the aurora, Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

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