Michael Griffin Station Quotations

Our Russian partners have steadfastly sustained the station while the shuttle has been down.

The decision was to put together an assembly sequence that allows us high confidence that we will finish the space station by the time the shuttle is retired.

We focused on redefining the station assembly sequence in fact to concentrate on assembly, and we are largely deferring utilization and we are paring logistics to the bone. We don't like that, but confronted with a choice between having a high confidence to be able to complete the assembly of the station and deferring utilization, or utilizing it heavily as we built it and possibly not finishing, we chose the former course.

As I have often said publicly, the shuttle is the most amazing machine humans have ever built, and it has been the recipient of the most brilliant engineering that America can provide. The station is a more difficult engineering project, by far, than was Apollo,