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Quotes by Astronaut

"Roger. Clear the tower. I got a pitch and a roll program, and this baby's really going."


"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."


"We were flying on a winged vehicle that would do reentry different than we had ever done before. So all of those were firsts. Test pilots truly love firsts."

"Then, much later, my next dream was to become an astronaut, and I was fortunate to realize that dream, also."

"If you're trying to get someone who's sick with a fever off of a submarine and it's cold and raining outside, the only way in and out of a submarine, generally, is through a fairly narrow hatch."

"We're taking up some science experiments, some crystal growth things, we have a refrigerator that carries up some samples, new samples that go into the station, we bring the old ones home; we have a lot of clothing, we have a lot of food-U.S. and Russian food."

"It is hard to know what you are talking about in mathematics, yet no one questions the validity of what you say. There is no other realm of discourse half so queer."

"I had, before I went to college, I had taken a few years off after high school and really had, I guess in those days, I had no intentions of going to college."


"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."

"The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel."

"Canada's a huge country, so to be able to unite the country through communication satellite technology or to be able to observe it through remote sensing technology from space is a natural fit for a country like Canada."


"I didn't really decide that I wanted to be an astronaut for sure until the end of college."


"So I saw many planets, and they looked just a little bit brighter than they do from Earth."

"We didn't use the shuttle robot arm before, so this has been a training flow to get ready for that."

"I've been as a pilot involved in the Gulf War. And then, in the No-Fly Zone."


"It was just using the liquid shampoo - the Russians have one very similar to the stuff we use on the Shuttle - you just wet your hair with it and then wipe it out."
Hair,

"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."

"I think we need to do a little more all-weather testing."


"I don't think the space station will ever do anything for exploration. Putting people up there for a year or more is the only way you will get anywhere near the exploration concept."

"After assembly complete, when we have a larger crew on orbit, a more complex vehicle, more laboratories and more robot arms, maybe we'll have room for specialists. But right now we don't."


"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."

"And, I think, as a kid, I had a strong motivation to do something of my life. And, I think that's the strongest motivation I really got. And, that came obviously from my parents and my grandparents."

"Researchers can measure what kind of angles your legs take up during the day when they're just trailing around behind you in weightless conditions, and what kind of impacts you feel during your exercise. They're going to compare that with what we do on the ground."

"My first dream as a child was to become a pilot. My second dream was to become an astronomer, and I pursued in parallel efforts and studies in these two areas."
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