If you want to say that the sky is black, and if I'm there, even if I fall back down again, I will be weightless for a period of time - maybe that's the definition of space.

I'm sure that there are places in the deserts in Australia that could be similar to where we might want to go on Mars.

When we get there, if we don't find any life on Mars, from that point on there will be life on Mars because we'll bring it there, whether it's germs and leftover urine bags, whatever it is.

There are a lot of reasons for not doing something. And if humanity had come up with all the reasons for not doing something we wouldn't have spread across the Earth the way we have. There's a curiosity, and I would submit that that curiosity will put human beings on the surface of Mars.

My expertise is the space program and what it should be in the future based on my experience of looking at the transitions that we've made between pre-Sputnik days and getting to the moon.

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

It's not easy to get human beings into orbit. So far only three nations have been able to do that, with all the resources that they put together. And I'm just a little skeptical that that's going to be done by the private sector without making use of what has been done by the government.