No, I think most astronauts recognize that the space shuttle program is very high-risk, and are prepared for accidents.

Once you are assigned to a flight, the whole crew is assigned at the same time, and then that crew trains together for a whole year to prepare for that flight.

My parents must have done a great job. Anytime I wanted to pursue something that they weren't familiar with, that was not part of their lifestyle, they let me go ahead and do it.

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.

Anything from making a mistake on an experiment that would ruin some scientist on earth's experiment - career, potentially - to doing something wrong with the satellite that a country was depending on for its communications, to making some mistake that could actually cost you and the crew either a mission or your lives. So there is a lot of pressure that's put on every astronaut to just make sure that he or she understands exactly what to do, exactly when to do it, and is trained and prepared to carry it out.

On a standard space shuttle crew, two of the astronauts have a test pilot background - the commander and the pilot.

The stars don't look bigger, but they do look brighter.