To move forward, what's required is a unified space agenda based on exploration, science, development, commerce, and security.

Over the years, I think I've matured in my spiritual evolution and development to understand a bit more than the narrow religious thinking - to move beyond that through a sort of perfection of the grandiose nature of the universe, and how perfect it is it in its sense and how satisfied we should all be in our place in that.

The future is about wings and wheels and new forms of space transportation, along with our deep-space ambition to set foot on another world in our solar system: Mars. I firmly believe we will establish permanence on that planet. And in reaching for that goal, we can cultivate commercial development of the moon, the asteroid belt, the Red Planet itself and beyond.

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

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

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

Some things just can't be described. And stepping onto the moon was one of them.