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I didn't go into the NASA program to pick up rocks or to go the moon or anything else. I went in there because I was a military officer, and that was the next notch in my profession.

I was useless at science. I was never going to be an astrophysicist.

At the end of our NASA careers, no one had a place for us in the military.

I never declared I wanted to be an astronaut, as I considered that was presumptuous.

I didn't really decide that I wanted to be an astronaut for sure until the end of college.

I don't have to go into outer space to write about an astronaut.

Congress came to see NASA primarily as a jobs program, not an exploratory agency.

Science fiction writers didn't predict the fade-out of NASA's manned space operations, and they weren't prepared with alternative routes to space when that decline became undeniable.

I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.

We didn't go to the moon to explore or because it was in our DNA or because we're Americans. We went because we were at war and we felt a threat.