We always had National Geographic and Astronomy magazines and Popular Mechanics lying around the house. I got interested in exploration and different parts of the world and different parts of the universe just from seeing those things around the house and the different discussions we had as a family.

To do things that are as complicated and challenging as spaceflight, you have to have all disciplines represented to get the job done.

So here in space, obviously, in microgravity, we have to use our hands to get ourselves around, to float around the modules, because our feet, we don't necessarily walk around, we just grab hand holds and move ourselves around, which means that we need our hands free to do just that.

To see the Earth below you when we could take a break... to appreciate the environment around us was very special.

In scientific subjects, the natural remedy for dogmatism has been found in research.

Successful prime-time television of any genre produces some kind of emotional reaction in the viewers. There are a lot of different emotions to tap into. The emotion of the reward of discovery, the feeling of righteous anger, the feelings of pathos and sadness, or sentimentality of being moved by something.

Science today is a highly collaborative exercise, and to convert it into a contest, as the Nobel does, is a bad way to look at science.

Time and time again, truly basic studies of simple experimental organisms have proved directly relevant to human biology and human disease. An investment in such basic studies is an effective investment indeed.