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...

When you work really hard for something for a long time it's almost impossible to believe that it's coming true.

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...

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

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

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

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