Was there a point in your missions that you would classify as the most scary, humorous, magnificent, and exciting?

"Scary", all launches on those solid rocket boosters are very, very, frightening. So, getting beyond the controlled explosion of the solids, after they have brought you to about 6000 feet per second impulse, they run out of fuel and separate from the shuttle. It is a very nice moment! I did loose a main engine on mission 51-F, but that was a very controlled, very smooth engine shut-down. We did not know what had caused it to shut-down, but you might say that was a moment of concern.

"Humor" mostly comes from within, internal humor, when I look at my own reaction to zero-g and this new environment. I intellectually know what the answer is, but at times I feel something totally different. I get into a sleeping bag, and then later, I have the desire to turn my body on its side. Intellectually, I know it is not going gain you anything in zero g. It is those kind of moments in which I kind of smile to myself, but of course, my body always wins.

"Magnificent" is looking at Earth, looking at the distances you can scale, looking at the sunrises and sunsets, aurora's dancing over hundreds of miles, being able to see thousands of miles, entire continents, magnificent creations of nature, the blues of the Bahamas, green jungles, the wonderful dunes of sand, or to see the entire Earth, the Pacific rim, volcanoes lined up all around it, active volcanoes, just the magnificence of creation and evolution in nature. That is the most magnificent, to me.

"Excitement" comes from the mission you are on, there are different forms, it may be a scientific result, you see the data coming in. It's a brand new frontier of science, an intellectual frontier, a physical frontier, and when you see the newness and when you see the kind of discoveries being made, this is one form of excitement. Another form of excitement, is what I spoke about, to experience and view nature this way.

Accomplishing the mission itself, such as fixing the Hubble Space Telescope, finally getting all of that work done, and realizing that maybe you have gotten that done, and maybe Hubble is going to get those images that are expected of it, that truly is a form of excitement.