I don't have any nicknames.
My parents must have done a great job. Anytime I wanted to pursue something that they weren't familiar with, that was not part of their lifestyle, they let me go ahead and do it.
The view of Earth is spectacular.
Astronauts will remain the explorers, the pioneers-the first to go back to moon and on to Mars. But I think it's really important to make space space available to as many people as we can. It's going to be a while before we can launch people for less than $20 million a ticket. But that day is coming.
We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see hurricanes form.
I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.
The pressure suit helps if something goes wrong during launch or re-entry - astronauts have a way to parachute off the shuttle. The suits protect you from loss of pressure in case of emergency.
NASA has to approve whatever we wear, so there are clothes to choose from, like space shorts - we wear those a lot - and NASA T-shirts.
No, I think most astronauts recognize that the space shuttle program is very high-risk, and are prepared for accidents.
That's something that is almost part of being human and I'm certain that will continue.
When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.
So I decided on science when I was in college.
One thing I probably share with everyone else in the astronaut office is composure.
Even though NASA tries to simulate launch, and we practice in simulators, it's not the same - it's not even close to the same.
I was always very interested in science, and I knew that for me, science was a better long-term career than tennis.
I think eventually private enterprise will be able to send people into orbit, but I suspect initially it's going to have to be with NASA's help.
But even in elementary school and junior high, I was very interested in space and in the space program.
For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds.
The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident.
So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight.
There's a huge amount of pressure on every astronaut, because when you get right down to it, the experiments that are conducted on a space flight, or the satellites that are carried up, the work that's to be done, is important and expensive work, and you are up there for a week or two on a Space Shuttle flight. The country has invested a lot of money in you and your training, and the Space Shuttle and everything that's in it, and you have to do things correctly. You can't make a mistake during that week or two that you're in space.
It was hard to become an astronaut. Not anywhere near as much physical training as people imagine, but a lot of mental training, a lot of learning. You have to learn everything there is to know about the Space Shuttle and everything you are going to be doing, and everything you need to know if something goes wrong, and then once you have learned it all, you have to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice until everything is second nature, so it's a very, very difficult training, and it takes years.
My background is in physics, so I was the mission specialist, who is sort of like the flight engineer on an airplane.
Well, we spend an awful lot of our time working and doing experiments. It's very busy up on the shuttle.
I do a lot of running and hiking, and I also collect stamps - space stamps and Olympics stamps.
