I remember growing up thinking that astronauts and their job was the coolest thing you could possibly do... But I absolutely couldn't identify with the people who were astronauts. I thought they were movie stars.

Although as a boy I had dreamed about going into space, I had completely forgotten about that until one day I received a call from an astronaut, who suggested that I should join the program.

The Scientific Revolution, that remarkable transformation of European thought that occurred between approximately 1550 and 1700, brought with it an ascendancy of the experimental method and the refusal to believe any explanation of natural phenomena that could not be proven to the satisfaction of the empirical observer.

Most fiction says you may or may not be alive tomorrow; science fiction talks often about the future.

Well, logos is science or reason, something that helps us to function practically and effectively in the world, and it must therefore be closely in tune and reflect accurately the realities of the world around us.

My mother, whose family was heavily rabbinic, said she wanted me to continue the family tradition in the rabbinate. My father said he wanted me to be a scholar of the Talmud, but he wanted me to make my living in science.