Even though I knew I was inside the space shuttle getting ready to go fly, something about it wasn't completely real up until we got the call at about one minute to go, to close and lock our visors and start our oxygen flow. People often ask me, "What did it feel like right at the moment of launch?" And they're surprised when I tell them actually what I felt was relief. It wasn't like being anxious or scared or anything. It was relief because this is something I had wanted to do my whole life and now that the boosters had lit, we were on our way to go do it and nothing was going to stop us.

Qian Xuesen, the father of the Chinese Space Program, studied in the United States, and he was a protégé of Theodore Von Carmen's at Cal Tech and helped start the jet propulsion laboratory there, and then he got caught up in the anti-communism wave and was accused of being a spy and was actually deported back to China where he built from nothing, their entire missile and space program. So, in a way, in a very real way, the United States in trying to protect so-called protect our secrets and throwing this guy out of the country, we helped seed and start the Chinese missile program.

The only two countries who will be able to launch people into space will be Russia and China. I've seen the Russian technology up close and I've had a chance to look at some of the Chinese technology. It's a very high level. They have good hardware and what China lacks is operational experience. But as they gain more experience, as they fly more missions, they'll catch up quickly. The U.S. does face the possibility of losing the lead in human space flight during this period of what we call the gap.

Two years ago, China tested an anti-satellite weapon that actually caused quite a bit of controversy and one of the controversies is that by blowing up a satellite, you are creating more space debris which is a hazard to satellites and spacecraft in lower Earth orbit and if they had been a partner, you'd have to do an experiment, and if they had been a partner in the international space station, would they have really done that test? They would have really thought twice about creating that tension between the countries and potentially endangering a project that they were a part of.

If you increase the number of rockets you build and you buy, then it's the scale of the economy, the price is going to come down. It may not come down in order of magnitude, but if several commercial ventures start being successful and there becomes a bigger market for these rockets, the price will naturally come down a bit. That's why I think Excalibur Almaz, we're a little bit unique in that we don't look at our so-called competition with disdain, we want them to succeed and it needs to have more than one player. Even if we are successful, we couldn't handle the entire market ourselves.

This was the first time we had two ex-Soviet Cosmonauts in Houston. A lot of us, including me, viewed it with some skepticism, because I grew up during the Cold War, so I had been hit with all this propaganda all along that their stuff wasn't that good, it wasn't that safe and we were so much better. What I found out later was that their space stuff was very good and good enough that I was certainly comfortable flying on their equipment. So, it was kind of a revelation of sorts as the years went by and I think it underscores the importance right now of international cooperation.

As far as Russia goes, they've been our partner for a long time now, since the early '90's. So you know, what's that, that's more than 15 years. And there have been times where things were a little tense, a little testy, but by and large, the partnership has been very successful. To give you two examples of that, when the Columbia accident occurred, the Russians supported us with their spacecraft faring our astronauts, including me, to the space station and also supplies.