You know, old folks can have dreams, too, as well as young folks, and then work toward them. And to have a dream like this come true for me is just a terrific experience.

That whole day [ of the space flight] is very vividly impressed on my memory because it was such a new experience. We hadn't done that before. And then I've recalled it so often since then I think that it's a - it's remained very vivid over the past 50 years, seems to me like about a week or two instead of 50 years.

To sit back and let fate play its hand out and never influence it is not the way man was meant to operate.

I suppose the one quality in an astronaut more powerful than any other is curiosity. They have to get some place nobody's ever been.

I think sometime we will go to Mars and I think we'll explore it with humans sometime, but I think it's really wise to do all the robotic exploration ahead of time and learn as much as possible. Once we have learned as much as possible with the robots, then that's the time to send people, and let them then continue the research that the robots have started.

There are times when you devote yourself to a higher cause than personal safety.

Zero G and I feel fine.