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I think there would be no shortage of applicants to the government astronaut corps to be settlers on the planet Mars. And I think this would be very inspiring.
Growing up, I was fascinated with Buck Rogers' airplanes. As I began to mature in World War II, it became jets and rocket planes. But it was always in the air.
People come up to me and say, 'It's too bad the space program got canceled.' This is not the case, and yet that is what most of the public thinks has happened.
I did grow up watching Buck Rogers and Buck Rogers didn't stop at Mars. In my lifetime, I will be incredibly disappointed if we have not at least reached Mars.
So without that Canadian invention we were grounded. And so that was a really important and key part of the mission and Canadians should take real pride in it.
I've had a chance to see something that is way outside everybody else's frame of reference and gives a perspective that is very different from everyone else's.
My first dream as a child was to become a pilot. My second dream was to become an astronomer, and I pursued in parallel efforts and studies in these two areas.
And, obviously as a, as one who likes to travel around myself a lot, I think the Earth is a beautiful place. And, I'm looking forward to some new perspectives.
I worked for some very good people who have helped me along the way and actually enabled me to have the opportunity to be selected to join the Astronaut Corps.
As a boy, because I was born and raised in Ohio, about 60 miles north of Dayton, the legends of the Wrights have been in my memories as long as I can remember.
Living inside the shuttle was a little like camping out. We ended up sleeping in our seats. You had to pay attention to housekeeping, not get things too dirty.
The beauty of Hawaii probably surpasses other places. I like the Big Island and the two mountains, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, where you can look out at the stars.
There are many people talking about access to space and, 'How can we make that cheaper? How can we turn that into a Southwest Airlines versus the big airlines?'
This is what I wanted all along, and after I finished my studies and begun the job of testing jet aircraft, well, there wasn't a happier pilot in the air force.
The first day or so we all pointed to our country. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continent. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.
And since Italy was involved in the space station as well as signed an agreement with NASA. And when the possibility to enter the 1996 Mission Specialist class.
When I did my spacewalks, it was during space station construction. So the shuttle was docked to the fledgling ISS at the time. So we would always stay tethered.
At that point, there will be the handover between the shuttle arm and the station arm so that the shuttle arm will take the cradle and put it into the cargo bay.
My petite little platinum blonde beauty of a wife suddenly turned into a public-relations dynamo. "The business is Buzz!" she proclaimed, and indeed so it became.
The first human beings to land on Mars should not come back to Earth. They should be the beginning of a build-up of a colony/settlement, I call it a 'permanence'.
So, whenever Scooter was the Pilot, he never had a chance to fly the orbiter. So, the joke is: I'm going to have a chance to fly it first and hand it over to him.
A civilization that only looks inward will stagnate. We have to keep looking outward; we have to keep finding new avenues for human endeavor and human expression.
Every day, we get a little bit closer to the kind of expertise and the kind of experience we're going to need to go there. I'd love to be the guy walking on Mars.
Society’s future will depend on a continuous improvement program for the human character. And what will that future bring? I do not know, but it will be exciting.
In thinking back to when we had our big glitch, I remember seeing it get light outside the window. We were in the clouds; I'm pretty sure we got hit by lightning.
Every month, we weigh ourselves to make sure we aren't losing weight. I really have been eating more than I do on Earth to make sure I don't lose too much weight.
Nobody ever asks who was the seventh person on the Moon. The only thing they know is who's number one and who's number two. Does anybody know who the last man was?
So, I decided that whatever I was, wanted to do with my life, it would have to do, it would have to have something to do with the exploration and doing new things.
The Space Shuttle will stop directly below the Space Station and Sergei and I will be looking out two different windows looking straight down at the Space Shuttle.
In my space journey, I felt vulnerable because we did not have anyone with medical background. When we make that big trip to Mars, we would need a doctor on board.
The first footfalls on Mars will mark a historic milestone, an enterprise that requires human tenacity matched with technology to anchor ourselves on another world.
I took a Russian class at Notre Dame. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would fly someday in a Russian spacecraft with two cosmonauts, speaking only Russian.
The space shuttle has been a fantastic vehicle. It is unlike any other thing that we've ever built. Its capabilities have carried several hundred people into space.
As a former Apollo astronaut, I think it's safe to say that SpaceX and the other commercial developers embody the 21st century version of the Apollo frontier spirit.
As I told a friend of mine once who asked me why I joined Mercury, I think if I had been alive 150 years ago, I might have wanted to go out and help open up the West.
The list of what I want to do is so long, I would need a few lifetimes to achieve them. For instance, I would like to fly small planes, maybe over the Ganges one day.
The Bahamas are gorgeous. The deep trench in the ocean floor called the Tongue of the Ocean, which comes between the islands, is the most beautiful deep indigo colour.
Just taking risks for risk's sake, that doesn't do it for me. I'm willing to take risks that I think are worth it, and I've worked so hard to make sure that I survive.
I'm honored to be the first woman to have the opportunity to command the shuttle. I don't really think about that on a day-to-day basis because I really don't need to.
I think it's inevitable that there will be Earthlings establishing a presence on Mars. And I would say that it would certainly take place by 2050 or shortly thereafter.
Gravity on Earth provides a force that keeps our bones and muscles working. In the microgravity of space, our bones and muscles are not taxed, so they begin to atrophy.
We are lucky to live on such a planet, and we should not take it for granted. After my space experience, I am a lot more tolerant of people and opinions, of everything.
There was nothing in my past that had lended itself to anything that had to do with space except for watching 'The Jetsons' and 'Star Trek' and stuff when I was little.
The solid waste is returned to Earth with the shuttle. If we [astronauts] ever dump solid waste overboard, it's going to give new meaning to wishing upon a falling star.
Any idiot can get an airplane off the ground, but an aviator earns his keep by bringing it back anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances that man and God can dream up.
There is very little doubt, in my mind, that what the next monumental achievement of humanity will be the first landing by an Earthling, a human being, on the planet Mars.
Although simulators are great for building step-by-step knowledge of a procedure, the worst thing that can happen in a sim is that you get a bad grade on your performance.
We developed already, before the first servicing mission, this has been further developed on the second servicing mission and we refined it this time, all the terminology.
Well, with so many space shuttle missions that we've done, I think it's just sort of natural that each one hasn't necessarily gotten the attention that the early ones did.
Well, the coolest thing I have seen so far, in terms of, like, me being an astronaut and seeing something unusual, was the rendezvous, the docking of a Progress spaceship.