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'll be helping them getting suited up, getting them in the airlock, getting the airlock prepared, and getting them out the hatch, and then talking them through these three spacewalks.

You look at it as a privilege. So you really decide that you're going to put the time in and work really hard to get to the point where you're ready.

I personally believe this Agency has always been very dedicated and has always worked as hard as it possibly can to do things as safely and as effectively as possible.

We're doing a lot of inspection on the leading edge of our wing on 114 and 121, the first two flights.

Well, right now we're so busy that I kind of had to put all the hobbies on hold. But I like going camping with my kids. I have two daughters; they're 7 and 10 years old.

I think I was very interested in the space program as a kid, watching the first Apollo missions to the moon, and it's something I thought that would be a lot of, of fun and exciting and a very worthwhile job.

A trip to space is a big motivator to give up some things in your personal life. Obviously, you can't give up everything and you don't want to.

Having the benefit to our society, not only here in the United States but throughout the world with the amount of invention you get from having a space program, is well worth the risk that an individual like myself has to take by flying in the vehicle.

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.

The first two missions have some test objectives, some new capabilities that we're going to try to develop on orbit to possibly be used on later flights.

My family deals with those risks. The best I can do is talk to them about some of those risks. I'm not incredibly specific with them, especially with my kids.

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.

There's been a lot of discussion about NASA culture and changing that. I think our culture has always been one of trying to do a very difficult job and do it well.

Later, after flying in the Navy for four or five years, spending some time on an aircraft carrier, I applied to and was accepted in a program where I went to graduate school first and then to the Naval Test Pilots School.

He's working a lot harder than I am. I tell these people that we really appreciate what they're doing for us.

I think we've done that. But it's not something you really notice, 'cause I've always thought the people here have always done their best, and they continue to do their best. They just might do it a little bit differently.

Well, I have an undergraduate degree, a couple of bachelor's degrees, from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.

Three of us will help the other two get suited up, get them in the hatch, and get them out the door.

There's a lot of interest there in the missions that I fly on and the ones my brother's involved with.

There are a lot of dedicated people out there that don't get the recognition that we get, but they're as important as the people that are sitting in the vehicle.

I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on.

The thing is helicopters are different from airplanes An airplane by it's nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or incompetent piloting, it will fly.

All my life, I've never been able to get enough airplanes. This will keep me flying every day.

My dad served in two wars has been flying airplanes for 60 years now. He was certainly quite an inspiration.

I realized that If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.

My wife had taken off on a plane. Two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I, of course, like any other person, felt potentially devastated, panicky a little bit.

I've had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.

I want to bring passengers on my airplanes to present to them my product.

Before we had airplanes and astronauts, we really thought that there was an actual place beyond the clouds, somewhere over the rainbow. There was an actual place, and we could go above the clouds and find it.there.

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 thought that automobiles were going to have mufflers and go fast and airplanes were going to fly fast.

Nine g's is good, if the pilot can stand it. We couldn't stand it. Not in the airplanes of World War II.

Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value.

We've got gays working there. If they can demonstrate long-term relationships, we make same-sex benefits available just as we do with common-law marriages. Gays are productive people. Some fly airplanes, some work in breweries.

There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.

It is just called Continuing Legal Education. You can go to lectures, you can even listen to tapes on airplanes - they want you to stay current. So you do have to stay current to maintain your license even if you are not practicing.

Later, in the early teens, I used to ride my bike every Saturday morning to the nearest airport, ten miles away, push airplanes in and out of the hangars, and clean up the hangars.

My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave.

The century of airplanes has a right to its own music.

I jump out of perfectly good airplanes, and it's a great thrill and it allows me to share in the dangers that our great men and women in uniform share in on a regular basis.

Airplanes may kill you, but they ain't likely to hurt you.

Everything from airplanes to kitchen blenders and even chopsticks comes with an instruction manual. Children, despite all their complexity, do not.

If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a "peace conference," you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.

I went to the University of Washington as a physics and astronomy major. My other interest, of course, was aviation. I always wanted to be a pilot. And if you're going to fly airplanes, the best place to be is the Air Force.

In Germany air became generally accepted Berlin in this area. It operated with 45 airplanes within the Low Cost range from Germany, and is one the most successful carriers in Europe.

It does not make sense that we are allowing known potential weapons, not unlike those the 9-11 hijackers used to overcome the crews of four airplanes, to be taken aboard passenger aircraft.

I've always loved airplanes and flight. The space program was really important to me as a kid. I still have a photo of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon in my living room.

These airplanes we have today are no more than a perfection of a child's toy made of paper.