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It's, I mean, for me, it's the same as training with my crewmembers. We share the same first part of the flight. We all go together. It's the most critical part of the flight, the ascent.

But a lot of that kind of work is done pre-flight, coordinating efforts with the flight directors and the ground teams, and figuring out how you're going to operate together.

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

All your travelling is together, you eat together, you're on stage as a band together, when you get to the sound-check the band and the crew are all together.

So, for me, I make no difference whether I'm training with my shuttle crew or the Expedition crew. Of course, I think I want to take more care of the Expedition crew, because they're going to stay there for a long time.

Although I know a lot of the previous shuttle flights, in theory, had their tasks laid out; but there were still some changes that came along for them.

Our shuttle crew is four people, because we're going to transfer a crew up to station, so all the jobs are divided between four people rather than five or six people. So it's been busy.

We used to have a crew of three on board the space station and even at one time a crew of two people, so it's something we can adjust to.

With a pilot, there's a lot of information that gets packed into 46 minutes or whatever it is. Usually what happens is that, throughout the season, you get to spend a little more quality time with the characters and get to know them a bit better, whether it's based on circumstance or relationships they've created with other characters.

Pilots learn to use human skills to communicate information and make decisions collectively, which creates a shared sense of responsibility among the team for better outcomes.