They didn’t tell me I was going into space until after they locked the shuttle doors and started counting down.

Unless we are able to commit to a permanent growing settlement [on Mars], then I don't think just going there with humans and coming back is worth doing. The expense of planning to come back is like the people who left Europe to come to America and then to turn around and go back to Europe, it really doesn't make any sense at all.

To me, money is a commodity that a person must have to function, not a goal in itself.

Fighter pilots have ice in their veins. They don't have emotions. They think, anticipate. They know that fear and other concerns cloud your mind from what's going on and what you should be involved in.

Returning to the Moon with NASA astronauts is not the best usage of our resources. Because OUR resources should be directed to outward, beyond-the-moon, to establishing habitation and laboratories on the surface of Mars that can be built, assembled, from the close-by moons of Mars.

We need to have people up there who can communicate what it feels like, not just pilots and engineers.

Trips to Mars, the Moon, even orbit, will require that we provide astrotourists with as many comforts from home as possible, including paying each other.