If we're not able to launch our own people and operate our own spacecraft anymore then, you know, space - whether it should be or not, it's seen as like a harbinger of technology. If you can fly people into space, if you can operate into space, then you've got high technology and if you're the leader of that, then you're the leader in technology. If we lose that on a more or less permanent basis, or for a long period of time, my fear is that it will creep into the national psyche in all areas and we as a nation as a whole will kind of be diminished.

Getting into a space suit and going outside, to me, getting your peripheral vision involved and looking at the Earth was a whole different experience than looking through the window. And it's kind of the same on earth. If you're driving in a car and you see like a beautiful sunset or landscape, it looks so much better if you stop and get out and kind of take it all in and that's kind of what it's like doing a spacewalk.

If we're not able to launch our own people and operate our own spacecraft anymore then, you know, space - whether it should be or not, it's seen as like a harbinger of technology. If you can fly people into space, if you can operate into space, then you've got high technology and if you're the leader of that, then you're the leader in technology. If we lose that on a more or less permanent basis, or for a long period of time, my fear is that it will creep into the national psyche in all areas and we as a nation as a whole will kind of be diminished.

Richard Branson is probably the most visible of the private commercial space guys, and what is venture, Virgin Galactic is about is sub orbital flight. That is, you'll see a spacecraft that looks more or less like an airplane and it will fly into space, but only spend about 15 minutes. It'll go up in a parabolic arc and then fall back down, and so the customers on that flight will only get about five minutes of weightlessness. They'll get to glimpse the horizon of the Earth, take a look at it before just before they start coming back down into the atmosphere.

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.

In a big picture sense, it's more national prestige that we're risking. You know, we are proud of our space program, but as we were talking earlier, the average American doesn't think that much about it right now. So, it may seem like something we could just give up and not really worry about it, but I think it starts creeping into the national psyche. If American astronauts have to hitch rides with the Russians or other nations in the future.

We were doing something called telemedicine, where we were using the ultrasound. One interesting application of this ultrasound is the possibility that you could possibly use it to measure critical bone areas during a long space mission and track if you're losing bone in these areas. On Earth, when they check you for bone loss, you get in this big machine. It's the size of a room and it's got a platform with an x-ray that scans your whole body and in critical areas and it takes a while and it just wouldn't be practical to have a machine like that in space.