I am definitely a little more nervous for my colleagues when I'm working at mission control than I am myself, on the shuttle.

On the day a country decides not to invest a cent in innovation, discovery or exploration, that country decides to be a tributary to others.

Some people will always be volunteers to explore, and it is, in my mind, a privilege.

Almost everything I do when I approach an operational problem comes from the time I've been in space. It's a way of organizing your thoughts. We use problem-solving; what we call "what-if-ing." What if this happened? What would we do? We go over plan B, C, D, E, F, and whatever else, depending on the criticality of what we're doing. This kind of thing can be applied almost everywhere, even at home.

When I saw the Earth from above, personally, as a spacecraft operator, it certainly reinforced and drove home the fact that there's one place where we can live right now. The seven billion of us are sharing a wonderful planet, and it's an absolute privilege to see it from above.

Nobody is going anywhere in 10 years.

Most people here don't have a wide emotional range. It's just the type of people astronauts are, they're required to be level.