I hate to think that we may be out there seven to ten years out and dependent on the Russians for our journey into space.

We used to joke about canned men, putting people in a can and seeing how far you can send them and bring them back. That's not the purpose of this program... Space is a laboratory, and we go into it to work and learn the new.

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.

I think no matter where we go in space to me the important thing is not only getting there and getting back, but it's also doing research, because that opens up as a possibility with that new distance of travel in space.

There is still no cure for the common birthday.

I don't know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.

We had a lot of confidence that there was going to be a successful mission. We weren't off on some suicide effort, certainly [with Friendship 7].