The blackness of space was a big shock to me. It is a deep, three-dimensional, oily blackness. You can feel the distance.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
What I didn't know was I was deeply attracted to the big space.
You could see the flames and the outer skin of the spacecraft glowing; and burning, baseball-size chunks flying off behind us. It was an eerie feeling, like being a gnat inside a blowtorch flame.
Space has always fascinated me. As a young boy looking up at the stars, I found it impossible to resist thinking what was out there and if I ever would experience space first-hand.
Space is certainly something more complicated than the average person would probably realize. Space is not just an empty background in which things happen.
In the context of general relativity, space almost is a substance. It can bend and twist and stretch, and probably the best way to think about space is to just kind of imagine a big piece of rubber that you can pull and twist and bend.
The Earth - from our altitude at Hubble, we're 350 miles up. We can see the curvature. We can see the roundness of our home, our home planet. And it's the most magnificent thing I've ever seen. It's like looking into Heaven. It's paradise.
Light is something that can really change your perception of space.
When I look at the clouds over the Earth, and I know how high clouds are, I get a sense we are really, really far above those clouds. I wouldn't call it scary, but I am aware I am in space.
Space is as infinite as we can imagine, and expanding this perspective is what adjusts humankind focus on conquering our true enemies, the formidable foes: ignorance and limitation.
Some people say they feel very small when they think about space. I felt more expansive, very connected to the universe.