If we can conquer space, we can conquer childhood hunger.

I think the public needs to be reminded just how much inspiration and intention was given throughout the world to be bold, to send human beings to the moon in the '60s and the '70s. It's important now to bring together the nations that weren't able to do it then and help them do it. We need to move forward.

I think both the space shuttle program and the International Space Station program have not really lived up to their expectations.

We should go boldly where man has not gone before. Fly by the comets, visit asteroids, visit the moon of Mars. There's a monolith there. A very unusual structure on this potato shaped object that goes around Mars once in seven hours. When people find out about that they're going to say 'Who put that there? Who put that there?' The universe put it there. If you choose, God put it there.

I think we need to move to the moons of Mars and learn how to control robots that are on the surface. It's not the impatient way of getting there, but Mars has been there a long time.

I don't go through life verbalizing what I feel.

There's a tremendously satisfying freedom associated with weightlessness. It's challenging in the absence of traction or leverage, and it requires thoughtful readjustment. I found the experience of weightlessness to be one of the most fun and enjoyable, challenging and rewarding, experiences of spaceflight. Returning to Earth brings with it a great sense of heaviness, and a need for careful movement. In some ways it's not too different from returning from a rocking ocean ship.