"The fuel started burning out of nowhere."

"In just 8 seconds the entire integration tower was filled with gas fumes and reached a temperature of up to 3000°C, making any attempt to escape literally Impossible."

"It was Friday night, August 22nd. I was doing a story in Maranhão. As soon as I heard of the accident, I packed my suitcase and headed to Alcântara. We had help from a bushman who showed us the way. It was a difficult walk, I was recovering from a gunshot wound I suffered a short time before, during a report in the Amazon. We were able to capture the first images of the destroyed launch base. This was the most important story of my life as a reporter."

"The way the Brazilian Space Program has been struggling with the lack of resources and political support during the past years - even decades - is regrettable. You can say the way that the program is under-resourced is almost criminal."

"A quick and precise transmission, even via radio frequency from a hidden spot inside the base, would be enough to make it possible for an intelligence service to 'crack' the Brazilian communications system and therefore perform a sabotage of this magnitude."

"There was no need for them (the US and France) to sabotage us. We were already doing that ourselves."

"A lot of things happen and we forget, you know? We forget and don't remember anything."

"I do not want the next generations of quilombolas to be mere soldiers serving the launch sites."

"We are not against CLA, we are not against the Brazilian space program. We understand its strategic importance and we really want our children to have a chance to help develop these projects, but we can not allow them to continue depriving us of the constitutional right to live on our land. In the end, between consent and disagreement, Alcântara is still a typical picture of the generalised contradiction that is Brazil. After all, it is a high-end technology center surrounded by a land where the 21st century has barely arrived."

"The path of the Condor is the path of the heart, of intuition, and of the feminine. The path of the Eagle is the path of the mind, of the industrial, and of the masculine."

"In the early years of the Cold War, the United States was Brazil's principal financial and technological partner. However, by the 80's Brazil sought to diversify its partnerships and become more self-sufficient. This was in part because of attempts by the U.S., through the Missile Technology Control Regime, to hamper Brazil's use of space-related technology for the development of a ballistic missile program, and because of Brazil's history of cooperation with countries not friendly to U.S. interests, such as Iraq."