Still, I also know that most people, including me, tend to applaud the wrong things: the showy, dramatic record-setting sprint rather than the years of dogged preparation or the unwavering grace displayed during a string of losses. Applause, then, never bore much relation to the reality of my life as an astronaut, which was not all about, or even mostly about, flying around in space.

In all of the movie portrayals, a spacewalking suit seems sort of insignificant, like a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. No one thinks much about it. But it's a spaceship, not a spacesuit, an entire life-support mechanism that's incredibly complex and cumbersome. It's very difficult to put on and off. You have to run it the whole time you are wearing it, and it redefines how you move. It's like if you put on a wetsuit and a snowmobile suit and froze yourself solid and then tried to go and do work.

If you start thinking that only your biggest and shiniest moments count, you're setting yourself up to feel like a failure most of the time.

Competence means keeping your head in a crisis, sticking with a task even when it seems hopeless, and improvising good solutions to tough problems when every second counts. It encompasses ingenuity, determination and being prepared for anything.

I've had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.

The Bahamas are gorgeous. The deep trench in the ocean floor called the Tongue of the Ocean, which comes between the islands, is the most beautiful deep indigo colour.

I guarantee if you walk into 100 spider webs, you will have changed your fundamental human behavior. And you can apply this to anything, And figure out a way to reprogram yourself, to change your primal fear.