Of course, in our grade school, in those days, there were no organized sports at all. We just went out and ran around the school yard for recess.

The same way people are now paying a couple thousand dollars to fly to other parts of the world, people will be paying $50,000 to spend a weekend on a space station.

There's no question that all the generations got excited about the first flights, with Kennedy's inspiration to go to the moon, leaving the planet for the first time, and fortunately coming back.

But when I was selected, after my very first tour of squadron duty, to become one of the youngest candidates for the test pilot school, I began to realize, maybe you are a little bit better.

I didn't mind studying. Obviously math and the physical science subjects interested me more than some of the more artistic subjects, but I think I was a pretty good student.

If somebody'd said before the flight, 'Are you going to get carried away looking at the Earth from the Moon?' I would have say, 'No, no way.' But yet when I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon, I cried.

I'd like to say I was smart enough to finish six grades in five years, but I think perhaps the teacher was just glad to get rid of me.