There had been a number of failures but we weren't going out to ride a failure. And we felt they'd corrected all the difficulties with the boosters before that time and the launch problems. And so we had a lot of confidence that there was going to be a successful mission. We weren't off on some suicide effort, certainly.

As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind - every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder.

Liftoff is very, very gentle, contrary to what most people think. Because you remember, the weight of the booster - the amount of thrust on the engine is just barely enough to get the booster underway. And so it's a very gentle liftoff, contrary to what most people think when they see all the fire and smoke of launch.

I still have my [flight] license and I can still pass a flight physical.

As far as actually setting up colonies of people who would live their whole lives in space, I think we're a long ways from doing that yet, and I think we have many, many decades before we could be able to even consider something like that.

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

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