The View Of Earth Is Spectacular.

It Takes A Couple Of Years Just To Get The Background And Knowledge That You Need Before You Can Go Into Detailed Training For Your Mission.

Anything From Making A Mistake On An Experiment That Would Ruin Some Scientist On Earth's Experiment - Career, Potentially - To Doing Something Wrong With The Satellite That A Country Was Depending On For Its Communications, To Making Some Mistake That Could Actually Cost You And The Crew Either A Mission Or Your Lives. So There Is A Lot Of Pressure That's Put On Every Astronaut To Just Make Sure That He Or She Understands Exactly What To Do, Exactly When To Do It, And Is Trained And Prepared To Carry It Out.

The Thing I'll Remember Most About The Flight Is That It Was Fun. In Fact, I'm Sure It Was The Most Fun That I'll Ever Have In My Life.

My Background Is In Physics, So I Was The Mission Specialist, Who Is Sort Of Like The Flight Engineer On An Airplane.

You Can Picture Pretty Easily If There Were A Paying Passenger Aboard A Rocket That Failed, Like Challenger Failed. Certainly It Would Be A Tragedy, And A Tragedy For The Company. They Would Have A Hard Time Recovering From It.