It took me a long time to get selected as an astronaut. In fact, I applied for 20 years before I was selected.

If I wasn't doing this kind of exploration, I'd like to be doing some other kind of exploration. It might be more risky, or less risky, but, in the business of exploration, risk is part of the territory.

In the 19th Century people were looking for the Northwest Passage. Ships were lost and brave people were killed, but that doesn't mean we never went back to that part of the world again, and I consider it the same in space exploration.

It so happened that my goals kind of matched my career progression toward becoming an astronaut.

The Space Shuttle will stop directly below the Space Station and Sergei and I will be looking out two different windows looking straight down at the Space Shuttle.

We're going to be focusing our science on things that will take us farther and longer into space. For many of those experiments, the crew members are human guinea pigs, which is fine; that's part of my job. I don't mind being a human guinea pig.

My dad served in two wars has been flying airplanes for 60 years now. He was certainly quite an inspiration.