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In the late '60s, I was seven, eight, nine years old, and what was going on in the news at that time that really excited a seven, eight, nine year old boy was the Space Race.

I remember growing up thinking that astronauts and their job was the coolest thing you could possibly do... But I absolutely couldn't identify with the people who were astronauts. I thought they were movie stars.

Going to Mars is a bunch of baby steps, and it started off with the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin.

I was born in 1960 and can still tell you the name of every astronaut from Mercury to Apollo. If I had a chance, I'd love to go into space on one of the privately developed space crafts.

There were about six years when there was not one American who went into space. We shouldn't do that again.

When I was younger, humans went to the moon when I was about 4 years old, and I imagined that as I got older and became an adult that traveling in space was going to be fairly common and something that we all did. So I grew up believing that I'll be an astronaut just like these guys were that were going to the moon.

I progressed through my schooling, undergraduate and graduate degrees, excited about math and science and engineering, but really didn't think about being an astronaut at that point. It was kind of unreachable.

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

I've always hankered after going into space and walking on the moon and Mars. I did want to be an astronaut, and had there been a manned space flight programme in the U.K., I would have been knocking on the door.

I was born in 1960, and space theory, especially in the last part of that time and going into the '70s, space was very relevant at that time. It was on television - all the experiments, the moon landings, everything like that.