Every Day, We Get A Little Bit

It Took Me A Long Time To Get Selected As An Astronaut. In Fact, I Applied For 20 Years Before I Was Selected.

We're Going To Be Focusing Our Science On Things That Will Take Us Farther And Longer Into Space. For Many Of Those Experiments, The Crew Members Are Human Guinea Pigs, Which Is Fine; That's Part Of My Job. I Don't Mind Being A Human Guinea Pig.

In The 19th Century People Were Looking For The Northwest Passage. Ships Were Lost And Brave People Were Killed, But That Doesn't Mean We Never Went Back To That Part Of The World Again, And I Consider It The Same In Space Exploration.

I Never Made A Career Decision Based Solely On My Desire To Be An Astronaut. I Attended The Naval Academy Because I Wanted To Be A Navy Pilot. I Majored In Math Because Math Had Always Come Pretty Easily To Me And I Liked It.

If I Wasn't Doing This Kind Of Exploration, I'd Like To Be Doing Some Other Kind Of Exploration. It Might Be More Risky, Or Less Risky, But, In The Business Of Exploration, Risk Is Part Of The Territory.