Space Training Quotes

There's one downside in comparison to both Soyuz and SpaceX, is that when you go to those places - when I went to Russia, or when I went to California - you're sort of focused on what you're doing. Your family's not there. Your lawn isn't needing to be cut. You're just focusing on what you need to do.

In my space journey, I felt vulnerable because we did not have anyone with medical background. When we make that big trip to Mars, we would need a doctor on board.

Even though NASA tries to simulate launch, and we practice in simulators, it's not the same - it's not even close to the same.

We wanted to be in great shape, we wanted to be able to cope with zero gravity, we wanted to be able to cope with accelerations and decelerations and so on. So all of us trained so that we were probably in the best physical condition we had ever been in up until that point.

I lived at Star City for more than a year ahead of my trip to Mir on May 18, 1991 in Soyuz TM-12. My life at Star City was so remote that learning Russian became my greatest priority.

The opportunities to become an astronaut in Canada were far and few.

When I went to Test Pilot School, that's when we came to Johnson Space Center. And I ended up seeing John Young and listening to him talk and getting a positive influence from him.

I've always been a bit of a space geek. I wrote an article years ago about the neutral buoyancy tank, which is this biblically sized pool where they train astronauts. And it was just the coolest thing.

The best simulator for spacewalking is underwater - it allows full visuals and body movement in 3D. Virtual reality is good, too, and has some advantages, like full Station simulation, not just part. Like all simulators, they have parts that are wrong and misleading: an important thing to remember when preparing for reality.

I had thought training for Mercury was rigorous. Once we got caught up in the Gemini training program, our Mercury training looked pretty soft.

I've completed half of my space training at Space City in Moscow. I love adventure, and I've been training in a centrifuge and MiG Fighter with a view to going into space and being a spokesman for space exploration!

My biggest love is space. I completed 800 hours' space training in Moscow and I became the world's oldest man to go to the North Magnetic Pole. At 67, I also became the oldest man to reach 28,400ft on Everest without oxygen.

Rugby has surprisingly helped me a lot as an astronaut and when I'm training in the space suit.

There's a perspective that I've gained as an astronaut that I didn't get from my science activities. In my science activities, I learned by the seat of my pants. Spending 17 years as an astronaut, I learned the NASA formalism of systems engineering as if my life depended on it. Literally.

It's extremely humbling to look around the astronaut office, see how much experience there is, see how many lessons there are to learn and it's truly starting at square one.

I had been here five years already, training very hard, learning about the systems, the shuttle, the station systems. But, everything really became real when I started to work with them.

It was hard to become an astronaut. Not anywhere near as much physical training as people imagine, but a lot of mental training, a lot of learning. You have to learn everything there is to know about the Space Shuttle and everything you are going to be doing, and everything you need to know if something goes wrong, and then once you have learned it all, you have to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice until everything is second nature, so it's a very, very difficult training, and it takes years.

It definitely helps to have been through the arm training flow before and to have used the arm on orbit, and it also gives me the confidence to know that our training facilities are really good, that when you get up there, you feel like you've been there.

As I'm sure you may know, I'm planning to become a spaceflight participant and have been recently approved to begin my spaceflight training by the Russian space federation having passed the necessary medical and physical tests.

I had been lucky that my physiology is well suited to space training.

The training flow for the space station is a year-and-a-half to two years.