Quotes from Jeffrey Kluger

As the long minutes of radio silence began, the three astronauts were disconnected from the rest of humanity in a way that no one ever had been before.

Fortunately, the complex separation maneuver would be made somewhat easier because part of the procedure was preloaded, which meant the computer had all of the nouns memorized. All Lovell needed to provide were the verbs.

The length of the blackout was not absolutely fixed. If all went well, it would last about thirty-five minutes—a bit longer if the engine fired successfully and the ship slowed to 3,700 miles per hour and settled into orbit, a bit shorter if the engine failed to fire and the ship continued to speed along at 5,800 miles per hour. If something worse happened, the radio silence would last forever.

And the three astronauts now orbiting the moon were the only people on or off the Earth who knew they had succeeded.

He was a boy composed of pieces just loosely held together, and the centrifugal spin of this latest terror could pull his loose bits apart. No magical belief in hummingbirds and glowworms could put him back together if that happened

When an organization starts hemorrhaging talent, CEOs and boards of directors want to know why. If the boss gets blamed for the brain drain and is ultimately removed, it means relief for the employees still there and ex post facto vengeance for the former ones.

We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.

Two facts related by time and place and not necessarily related by cause and effect.

Kraft—making his presence felt at NASA in much the same way he had at NACA—had established one of the most important of the space agency's growing list of flight rules: If you don't know what to do, don't do anything at all.

As MBA professors endlessly tell their students, companies do best when they stick to what they do well. There's a reason Apple doesn't make blenders. There's a reason Haagen-Dazs doesn't sell meat. And there's a reason drug companies should focus on saving and improving lives - not jeopardizing them.

More and more NFL players have been willing their bodies to science so that their brains can be studied even if they die of other causes.

The families of many athletes - incensed at the sports leagues and hoping to make games safer overall - are increasingly making the brains of players who die prematurely and suspiciously available for study. Some athletes are even making the bequest themselves.

Paul McCartney had a baby when he was 61; Rod Stewart was 66; Rupert Murdoch was a stunning 72. Not only does that mean they'll have less stamina than the average dad, that means they'll, well, check out a lot sooner too.

It's far too much to say that effective hoping is the only - or even the biggest - part of what it takes to succeed. If 14% of business productivity can be attributed to hope, that means 86% is dependent on raw talent, fickle business cycles, the quality of the product you're selling, and often pure, dumb luck.

There's no such thing as downtime for your brain.

Credit or debit cards, for starters, are nothing short of shoppers' Novocain. Even in the age of digital purchases and virtual money, we still attach a special value to dirty paper with pictures of presidents on it. Handing some of that to a cashier simply hurts more than handing over a little sliver of plastic.

Ambition is an expensive impulse, one that requires an enormous investment of emotional capital. Like any investment, it can pay off in countless different kinds of coin.

No one ever pretended that shopping for anything is a rational experience. If it were, would there be Fluffernutter? Laceless sneakers? Porkpie hats? Would the Chia Pet even exist?

A close family member once offered his opinion that I exhibit the phone manners of a goat, then promptly withdrew the charge - out of fairness to goats.

My family went through divorces and remarriages and the later, blended home - and then watched that home explode, too.

Vaccines save lives; fear endangers them. It's a simple message parents need to keep hearing.