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I've been approached to do some things with astronauts and the preparation that astronauts go through.

So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight.

As an astronaut, when you're getting ready to go out of that hatch, you know that's the pinnacle of both your career and your life. The view completely blows you away. The real challenge is getting past the excitement and getting focused and down to work.

So most astronauts getting ready to lift off are excited and very anxious and worried about that explosion - because if something goes wrong in the first seconds of launch, there's not very much you can do.

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.

It takes a few years to prepare for a space mission.

Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts.

I think most astronauts are not risk takers. We take calculated risks for something that we think is worthwhile.

To become an astronaut, someone has to have a dream of his own to do something that he or she has always wanted to do, then commit himself to making that dream come true.

We want to make sure we get living astronauts to the surface of Mars.