The reason space missions need artificial gravity is clear: humans simply did not evolve to live in zero gravity.

Designing a station with artificial gravity would undoubtedly be a daunting task. Space agencies would have to re-examine many reliable technologies under the light of the new forces these tools would have to endure. Space flight would have to take several steps back before moving forward again.

If someone offered me a free trip to the International Space Station, I would decline. I like Earth. I like the internet. I like Diet Coke. I have cats. I write about brave people - I'm not one of them.

Research into manned spaceflight is shifting from low-Earth orbit to destinations much further away, like Mars and the asteroid belt. But society will have to invent many new technologies before it can plausibly send people to those distances.

Being a mother has been my greatest teacher and also the most self-sacrificing thing I've ever done.

The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher.

We have not given science too big a place in our education, but we have made a perilous mistake in giving it too great a preponderance in method in every other branch of study.

After the turmoil of the Second World War, my family ended up in Russian-occupied East Germany. When I attended fourth grade, I had to learn Russian as my first foreign language in school. I found this quite difficult because of the Cyrillic alphabet, but as time went on, I seemed to do all right.