A lot of people ask...why a man is willing to risk... Well, we've got to do it. We're going into an age of exploration that will be bigger than anything the world has ever seen... If a man faces up to the (unknown) and takes the dare of the future, he can have some control over his destiny.

I am a stranger. I come in peace. Take me to your leader and there will be a massive reward for you in eternity.

We thought that the odds of things working OK were up in the upper 90 percent or we wouldn't have gone. But the - there were some problems cropped up on the flight but was able to take care of those OK and - although they were things that we hadn't really trained that much for. But it was the time of the Cold War and so there were was a lot of pressure on the - to get going and the Russians were claiming that they were - Soviets were claiming they were ahead of us in technology.

This is a day we have managed to avoid for a quarter of a century. We've talked about it before and speculated about it, and it finally has occurred. We hoped we could push this day back forever.

America put more money into research, into the new and the unknown than any nation in history, and the same thing with education, and those two things led us into a worldwide preeminence in a very short period of time.

The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel.

On K-12 education America has gone down, down, down compared to the other nations. It doesn't mean that we have gotten dumber. It just means that we have not advanced as fast in those areas as other nations have done, and we're way down right now.