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When you're getting ready to launch into space, you're sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen.

Looking down at the Earth, you started to pick up a sense of speed much more than I had noticed on orbit.

One of the jokes on our flight is that, if we have a normal entry day going, the plan is for me... to actually take the orbiter first and fly it for maybe 10 or 15 seconds and then hand it on over to Scooter.

When you launch in a rocket, you're not really flying that rocket. You're just sort of hanging on.

Then during the mission itself, I used the space shuttle's robot arm to release a satellite into orbit.

I see it as one of my jobs to make sure that, it sounds ridiculous, but to make sure the folks are eating, make sure folks are getting enough fluids, make sure folks are, you know, comfortable in the orbiter.

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.

We launch when we're kind of in the same orbit that they are in terms of being matched up in inclination in space, and we're just in a little different altitude.

Sometimes, you get too hopped up, too excited, and it works against you.