I'm 45, and I'm still at school, essentially. Even after being assigned to the mission, I had to write a number of exams, with people commenting on my performance.

Definitely you don't become famous by doing something bad; that's a professional death sentence.

You're always under the microscope, and you don't know which mission you're going to get. It's a surprise.

Nobody is going anywhere in 10 years.

If anything, when you're up in space and you're inside a space ship, which is your home, and without which you would not survive, you know that Earth is your home. This is the only place you can return. In fact we're very meticulous. Part of our job is to maintain the spaceship. If we apply the same kind of model to Earth maybe we'd have a different outlook.

You're less apprehensive when you know what to expect. Also, the first flight is very important in this performance-driven culture I work in; it establishes your reputation. If you don't do well, it's probably your last flight.

The one thing we can't really train for is weightlessness, real weightlessness. It's a ton of fun. It's pure Newtonian physics. You push in one direction, you go in the opposite direction with an equal force.