When I circled the moon and looked back at Earth, my outlook on life and my viewpoint of Earth changed... Earth is a spaceship, just like Apollo - and just like Apollo, the crew must learn to live and work together. We must learn to manage the resources of this world with new imagination.

I was born a year after Lindbergh made his historic trip across the Atlantic. Boys like either dinosaurs or airplanes. I was very much an airplane boy.

We learned a lot about the Moon, but what we really learned was about the Earth. The fact that just from the distance of the Moon you can put your thumb up and you can hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything that you've ever known, your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself-all behind your thumb. And how insignificant we really all are, but then how fortunate we are to have this body and to be able to enjoy loving here amongst the beauty of the Earth itself.

I didnt go into the NASA program to pick up rocks or to go the moon or anything else. I went in there because I was a military officer, and that was the next notch in my profession.

For most of the time carrier aviation is more challenging than flying in a spacecraft

The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.

The real friends of the space voyager are the stars. Their friendly, familiar patterns are constant companions, unchanging, out there.