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Quotes by Astronaut
"Of course I was delighted the flight was over, but I still had to worry about cleaning up inside the cabin, I had to worry about the hatch, how to get in the sling, and so on."
16
"When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system."
16
"We haven't sat down with Scott and Caroline and said, Now you realize that there's X amount of pounds of thrust. And this can happen and that can happen."
Now,
16
"So, whenever Scooter was the Pilot, he never had a chance to fly the orbiter. So, the joke is: I'm going to have a chance to fly it first and hand it over to him."
16
"I will go around the space shuttle and give a guided tour of the major areas and describe what is done in each area. This will be called The Ultimate Field Trip."
16
"The microgravity or the very, very low amount of gravity that we have up in space forces some changes in different processes. It forces changes in us as human beings."
16
"So it's, I think it's quite, quite unique to fly with somebody with so much experience."
16
"Now you're coming back to Earth, and things are getting more and more dynamic."
16
"I started this whole endeavor really. And at the beginning we had the selection in Italy. And that was pretty much among people that had held previous experience in that particular satellite. So, I was in that, in a good position then."
16
"It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract."
16
"I had done everything I could do as an astronaut, and we have a long line of inexperienced astronauts waiting for their first missions, and so my role really should be to step aside and help them prepare for their missions, rather than to try to get another mission."
15
"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."
Time,
15
"Having the opportunity to fly the first flight of something like a space shuttle was the ultimate test flight."
15
"Every shuttle mission's been successful."
15
"The student develops an analytical as well as finely blended character. He is able to choose from a wide variety of job fields from which to embrace a career, without having to be a specialist in one particular discipline."
15
"We have overcome the notion that mathematical truths have an existence independent and apart from our own minds. It is even strange to us that such a notion could ever have existed."
15
"I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks, but for the ledger of our daily work."
Work,
15
"I felt fine after 24 hours and asked the state commission to prolong my stay in space to three days. And I carried out the entire schedule. Could I have done that if I had been half-dead?"
15
"I could do exploration in this particular career field, and it was a goal that, even if I didn't reach it, it was so high it seemed almost impossible, but even if I didn't reach it, I would still have a good time and a very satisfying career."
15
"After the Shuttle checks out on its two upcoming flights, it will be ready to take larger components up to the International Space Station later this fall."
15
"You know, piloting really isn't my hobby. And, it's probably not something I'd do in my spare time if I could do whatever I wanted to do. But, I'll tell you: if you've got to make a living, it's a great way to make a living!"
15
"My sympathies have always been for working-class people."
15
"It definitely helps to have been through the arm training flow before and to have used the arm on orbit, and it also gives me the confidence to know that our training facilities are really good, that when you get up there, you feel like you've been there."
15
"I try to tell the people that are sort of new here when they come in and do their flights and whatever, the things that you remember most after your flights are the interactions you've had with your crew. Those are the most satisfying things you take away from a flight."
15
"We were on the dark side of the Earth when we started to see outside the window this soft pink glow, which is a lot of little angry ions out there going very fast. We were hitting them very fast."
15
"The space shuttle has been a fantastic vehicle. It is unlike any other thing that we've ever built. Its capabilities have carried several hundred people into space."
14
"And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right."
14
"Then, much later, my next dream was to become an astronaut, and I was fortunate to realize that dream, also."
14
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