It takes a couple of years just to get the background and knowledge that you need before you can go into detailed training for your mission.

The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident.

I was always very interested in science, and I knew that for me, science was a better long-term career than tennis.

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.

You know, I go around the country a lot.

After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the things that had gone wrong.

If they asked me if I wanted to go into space tomorrow, I'd do it in a heartbeat. On the other hand, if they asked me if I wanted to go into training for three years and then go into space again, I'd probably say no.