Quote

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

You've done it in the simulator so many times, you don't have a real sense of being excited when the flight is going on. You're excited before, but as soon as the liftoff occurs, you are busy doing what you have to do.

The most anxious time was during launch, just because that is so dramatic.

Astronauts are very professional and when they're preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives.

It is the greatest shot of adrenaline to be doing what you have wanted to do so badly. You almost feel like you could fly without the plane.

Our three big emergencies are fire, loss of pressurization or contaminated atmosphere. Any of those things in a spaceship are very deadly and time critical. Everybody's trained, but I'm the commander of the ship, and it's up to me to decide.

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.

One thing I probably share with everyone else in the astronaut office is composure.

I get more anxious than nervous before a concert.

When you see the orbiter headed out the launch pad and then crawling up the hill and being hard down on the pad, it does something to you.