I was selected to be an astronaut on a military program called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory back in '67 and that program got cancelled in '69 and NASA ended up taking half of us...

Looking down at the Earth, you started to pick up a sense of speed much more than I had noticed on orbit.

You're going very fast when you're on orbit, going around the world once every hour and a half.

We were only on orbit a little over two days so we had no adverse effects from being weightless...

Having the opportunity to fly the first flight of something like a space shuttle was the ultimate test flight.

I was selected to be an astronaut on a military program called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory back in '67 and that program got cancelled in '69 and NASA ended up taking half of us...

If you want to go into space first time on a new vehicle that's never been flown, you want to go with a pro.