I lived at Star City for more than a year ahead of my trip to Mir on May 18, 1991 in Soyuz TM-12. My life at Star City was so remote that learning Russian became my greatest priority.

I get standing ovations at meetings when I say Britain should be involved in human spaceflight. Unfortunately, that goal has been blocked by a handful of people in high office.

I operated a periscopic TV camera so the commander, Anatoly Artsebarsky, could establish where we were heading. It is real teamwork on Soyuz.

There is good science you can do in space. There is stuff there you cannot do on Earth and we can gain understanding from it.

I've always been into things like exploring and science on the frontiers. I had pictures of space up in my room way back in middle school, right next to the boy band posters!

Whereas in the past people have seen the two sexes as almost incomprehensibly different, now there is a group of people that are explaining the connections between both the genders, literally in the way their biology informs some of their expression.

Bio-technology is the science of the future.

If you're sending a message to extraterrestrials, what you want to send is what's special about us and our planet - what is unusual. Now, that's not basic chemistry or mineralogy; it's pretty much the cultural stuff and the consequences of evolution.