You don't think about the danger. The spaceship becomes your home.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Our three big emergencies are fire, loss of pressurization or contaminated atmosphere. Any of those things in a spaceship are very deadly and time critical. Everybody's trained, but I'm the commander of the ship, and it's up to me to decide.
Danger is part of my job. It's always there, but you can't think about it too much otherwise you start to be too slow.
Danger is ever-present in life, more for some than others.
The actual danger is nothing, and the positive advantages very great.
Flying in space is risky. It will never be safe, and the best thing we can do is manage those risks. It's important for people, for human beings, to be in space because they're adaptable and because they're not pre-programmed software that can go off and do tasks that are appropriate for machines.
My fear is dying badly, through illness or injury. But what a glorious demise it would be to burn up in space.
A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.
I think most astronauts are not risk takers. We take calculated risks for something that we think is worthwhile.
After the loss of Columbia a couple of years ago, I think we were reminded of the risk. All of us, though, have always known that the Space Shuttle is a very risky vehicle, much more risky than even flying airplanes in combat.
I always feel the danger because you might always be subject to an unexpected or emergency event.