NASA has to approve whatever we wear, so there are clothes to choose from, like space shorts - we wear those a lot - and NASA T-shirts.

I haven't written my memoirs or let the television movie be made about my life.

That's something that is almost part of being human and I'm certain that will continue.

My background is in physics, so I was the mission specialist, who is sort of like the flight engineer on an airplane.

The rockets light! The shuttle leaps off the launch pad in a cloud of steam and a trail of fire.

I've discovered that half the people would love to go into space and there's no need to explain it to them. The other half can't understand and I couldn't explain it to them. If someone doesn't know why, I can't explain it.

The view of earth is spectacular from space. Most people imagine that when astronauts look out the window of the shuttle they see the whole earth like that big blue marble that was made famous by the flights that went to the moon. But the shuttle is much, much closer than those astronauts were. So we don't see the whole planet, the whole ball at once, we just see parts of it.