I came to dedicate my life to opening space to the average person and crafting designs for new spaceships that could take us far from home. But since Apollo ended, such travels were only in our collective memory.

It was challenging to understand what was necessary to successfully carry out all the training simulations that we, as crewmen, would experience, and make a very successful use of that training and education.

I've been to the Titanic in a yellow submarine and the North Pole in a Russian nuclear ice breaker.

I understand that Detroit was a pretty rough place to grow up in the '70s and '80s.

The surface of the moon is like nothing here on Earth! It's totally lacking any evidence of life. It has lots of fine, talcum-powderlike dust mixed with a complete variety of pebbles, rocks, and boulders. Many pebbles, fewer rocks, and even fewer boulders naturally make up its surface. The dust is a very fine, overall dark gray. And with no air molecules to separate the dust, it clings together like cement.

We're number one on the runway.

I didn't start skiing until I was 50. My wife Lois taught me how to ski. I'm proficiently conservative.