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My dad and my mom convinced me to go into biomedical engineering because they said astronauts going to Mars will need life support systems.

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.

I've been approached to do some things with astronauts and the preparation that astronauts go through.

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.

I saw this movie 'The Right Stuff' when I was in college, and it really rekindled my interest in being an astronaut. I started taking those steps, and then I realized it would be the chance of a lifetime. It would be a dream life: not just a job, but the whole life.

I worked for some very good people who have helped me along the way and actually enabled me to have the opportunity to be selected to join the Astronaut Corps.

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.

To become an astronaut, someone has to have a dream of his own to do something that he or she has always wanted to do, then commit himself to making that dream come true.

I had been lucky that my physiology is well suited to space training.

Although as a boy I had dreamed about going into space, I had completely forgotten about that until one day I received a call from an astronaut, who suggested that I should join the program.