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It's really a good feeling to know that we put this up there, that it's working, that all these people's plans that worked so hard came together and things fit and we've got a real space station.

The International Space Station is a phenomenal laboratory, an unparalleled test bed for new invention and discovery. Yet I often thought, while silently gazing out the window at Earth, that the actual legacy of humanity's attempts to step into space will be a better understanding of our current planet and how to take care of it.

It's important to bring things back from the Space Station because, unlike somebody living at the house where the garbage truck comes by twice a week, they don't have that in space.

Space station is, it really is one of the more, if not the most, impressive technological achievement of the modern day, not only in what we've accomplished engineering-wise but what we've accomplished on this international scale, because anybody will tell you that half the challenge is making it all work.

I don't think the space station will ever do anything for exploration. Putting people up there for a year or more is the only way you will get anywhere near the exploration concept.

Our goal is to tell people about the International Space Station. I think very rarely people look up 250 miles and think, What are those guys working on, what are those men and women doing at this moment... They're living and doing regular things, but also doing incredible work as well. We really want to bring that to people.

The building of the International Space Station is something wonderful, and it will show us how to take the next step beyond low-Earth orbit.

The space station is the most unique laboratory we've ever built. The reason we have it is to do research on materials, people, medical matters, pharmaceuticals - the possibilities are nearly endless.

What we get from building a space station, the economic return, the science return, is very, very important to our nation, to our economy.