Quotes About Halley

You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lose your way in the first place. But standing there alone on the landing, I thought of Grandma Halley and how she'd held me close against her lap as we watched the sky together. I'd always thought I couldn't remember, but suddenly in that moment, I closed my eyes and saw the comet, finally, brilliant and impossible, stretching above me across the sky.

An Otter's range can be 800 to 1,000 miles,' Studd replies, 'but it's also possible to refuel in mid-air as it were, by carrying drums of fuel and piping them into the system.' He laughs. 'I was flying the Director – Dr Laws – back from Halley and the team was piping fuel in from the spare drums carried on board. I made the engines miss on purpose and shouted back to the crew, "Faster, you bastards".

Halley had become England's second astronomer royal in 1720, after John Flamsteed's death. The puritanical Flamsteed had reason to roll over in his grave at this development, since in life he had denounced Halley for drinking brandy and swearing "like a sea-captain." And of course Flamsteed never forgave Halley, or his accomplice Newton, for pilfering the star catalogs and publishing them against his will.