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My dad, who likes genealogy, knows who was the first guy that came from France in 1655, and the guy settled in Montreal, and Montreal is an island where the city is in Quebec.
It reassures me that when we get together as a community, when we put our effort together and our will to help others, we can achieve anything, and that is a lesson for us all.
Young kids get motivated by everything. If they see a great dancer, some of them would want to become a dancer. If they see a great soccer player, they want to become a soccer player.
It is clear that I am a person who believes fundamentally in facts, evidence, data, and science, which supports decision-making and allows us to function as a society based on knowledge.
It is one planet and we all have a duty to protect it. We have to work together. We have to use our power to work together and make decisions and changes that are needed to preserve our world.
When you're a little different than others, it takes a little more time to fit in. If you really want to be there, there are no ingredients you need other than effort, perseverance and teamwork.
Clearly, when I first started talking about the fact that I wanted to be an astronaut, I was in primary school, so people understand that we want to be all kinds of things then. It's not a big deal.
You can learn at any age, but when you are young, you are like a sponge, and when you are introduced to more different types of things before the age of seven and eight, then you get fascinated by that.
Anyone can accomplish anything and rise to the challenge as long as they are willing to work with others, to let go of the personal agenda, to reach a higher goal, and to do what is right for the common good.
The one thing we can't really train for is weightlessness, real weightlessness. It's a ton of fun. It's pure Newtonian physics. You push in one direction, you go in the opposite direction with an equal force.
I think it's the entire privilege I had to represent my country. It's not the going to space alone; it's to be part of that endeavour and to contribute a very small part to a very important step toward pushing the frontier.
We have fans that circulate air in the cabin of the module of the space shuttle. They're running all the time. They're absolutely necessary because, otherwise, you will breathe your own CO2 and intoxicate yourself quite fast.
I really feel like, on my first mission, the first mission is when you prove yourself and hopefully deserve the privilege to continue as an astronaut and remain in the corps and get granted an opportunity for a second mission.
You're less apprehensive when you know what to expect. Also, the first flight is very important in this performance-driven culture I work in; it establishes your reputation. If you don't do well, it's probably your last flight.
I'm still convinced that - I'm sorry to say - the body of evidence shows that the planet is warming up. And it's warming up at a certain rate that has never been seen before in the history of the planet. We have to take that seriously.
My husband and I don't worry about each other the way we might if we didn't have similar jobs. I sometimes get an email where he tells me he's heading off on a mission to do terrain avoidance 50 feet above the ground at 500 knots. And I just say, "Okay, have a good flight."
The science behind Interstellar is interesting, because some of it is absolutely real astrophysics and orbital mechanics, some of it is theoretical physics, and some of it is completely Hollywood. When a science fiction movie is based on plausible science, it's really good.
Definitely you don't become famous by doing something bad; that's a professional death sentence. You remember that whatever you do, someone will be watching, and you study all the time. It sounds terrible, but you get used to it. I'm 45, and I'm still at school, essentially.
When I saw the Earth from above, personally, as a spacecraft operator, it certainly reinforced and drove home the fact that there's one place where we can live right now. The seven billion of us are sharing a wonderful planet, and it's an absolute privilege to see it from above.
I was a flight engineer on my second flight, which is the most senior position a non-American can have aboard the shuttle. We're the cockpit crew. We fly the vehicle up to space, dock the vehicle to the space station, undock it at the end of the mission, and return it to the ground.
We should continue all the time to look out for those who have less, to stand for those who can't, to reach out across differences, to use our land intelligently, to open our borders and welcome those who seek harbour, and never, ever cease to be curious, ask questions, and to explore and search.
On my first mission, I was the spacewalk supervisor: the person that runs the spacewalk from inside the vehicle. As such, I was the one that closed the hatch when my colleagues left to work outside for six hours. And I was also the person who opens the hatch when they come back, and we repressurize.
I always call myself a space construction worker. We were only the second mission ever to go to the space station. There was nothing on board. We brought the first three tons of equipment, including some of the Imax camera stuff. We literally switched the light on to the station and walked in. It was an assembly mission.
I actually don't remember Apollo 11 exactly because, at the time, I was five years old. The landing happened at night, and the walk on the moon happened at night eastern time, and I asked my parents; my mom said I was probably asleep, and so I just don't have any recollection. I do have recollection of the later missions to the moon.
The prerequisite that people have a scientific or engineering degree or a medical degree limits the number of female astronauts. Right now, still, we have about 20 per cent of people who have that prerequisite who are female. So hey, girls: Embrace the very fun career of science and technology. Look at computer science. That's what I did.
I'm 9, 10, and I'm watching the Apollo astronauts go to the moon. We're sitting on the floor of a school, and they have this... huge TV, and I'm looking at that, and I'm thinking 'Me, I would like to do that.' But it didn't dawn on me then that they were American; I was Canadian. They were men; I was a girl. They were test pilots, military folks.
If anything, when you're up in space and you're inside a space ship, which is your home, and without which you would not survive, you know that Earth is your home. This is the only place you can return. In fact we're very meticulous. Part of our job is to maintain the spaceship. If we apply the same kind of model to Earth maybe we'd have a different outlook.
I really believe that, in 500 years, we will still remember the International Space Station, because it will have been the first time, really and truly, that nations put a lot of money, brains, resources, and effort together to build something peacefully, and to work together for the sole and unique purpose of furthering our knowledge and bringing it back to Earth for our mutual good.
Almost everything I do when I approach an operational problem comes from the time I've been in space. It's a way of organizing your thoughts. We use problem-solving; what we call "what-if-ing." What if this happened? What would we do? We go over plan B, C, D, E, F, and whatever else, depending on the criticality of what we're doing. This kind of thing can be applied almost everywhere, even at home.
Most astronauts are very down-to-earth people. Many of us, three-quarters, have an engineering degree, and we have a very Cartesian, rational approach to things. You don't go and get swept off your feet. That's not your job and that's not why you're hired. So if you get so mesmerized that you forget to do what you're supposed to do, whether it's to open the cargo door of the space shuttle or configure something inside, then you should not be there as a professional operator.
Will we go explore? Absolutely. That's what humans have been doing since we left the caves in Ethiopia. Why? Because this is part of our nature. We're curious. We want to push the envelope. That will never stop. We will see people on Mars, hopefully in our lifetime. My hope is that the endeavour is so large, so complex, so technically challenging, so demanding and so uplifting, that it will be done with a consortium of nations. I hope the people who do set foot on Mars will do so for all mankind, and not just one nation in particular.