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

Our class was brought in knowing there could be a chance we'd never fly on the space shuttle. Prior to accepting, they called and said are you still interested knowing you may never fly in space?

I've had a chance to see something that is way outside everybody else's frame of reference and gives a perspective that is very different from everyone else's.

I'll reach up with the shuttle arm, almost like passing a baton from the new arm to the old arm,

Nothing focuses your mind quite like flying a jet. That's one reason NASA requires that astronauts fly T-38s: it forces us to concentrate and prioritize in some of the same ways we need to in a rocket ship.

In the Soyuz, the little Russian capsule, you can actually hear the banging of the big shield, the big heat shield on the bottom, as it slowly erodes away from the heat and pieces of it fly off like sparks across your window, and it's an interesting thing to ride through, you know.