Zero gravity is such an alien environment - completely different from everything we've grown up with every single day of our lives. And it's incomprehensible how much better it was than I anticipated it would be.
Gravity always sucks. It really, really does. It's a big challenge just re-adapting to feeling heavy again, you know? Even my arm feels heavy. My legs feel heavy.
I think the International Space Station is providing a key bridge from us living on Earth to going somewhere into deep space.
To be able to float and move around and, pretty much effortlessly, do whatever you want with your body in space is pretty amazing.
You can solve problems, but the solutions don't always have to be elaborate or expensive.
I am not sure what the future holds for me personally, but I envision myself continuing to work on spaceflight programs.
There is a potential to be a big explosion of what spaceflight is gonna mean to just an everyday person in the near future. I think it's very hopeful for our young people: all the exciting things that they could be doing in the future relative to space and space exploration.
It's been fun doing interviews with the other astronauts, getting to hear: 'Oh, that's how he explains it' or 'That's how she thinks about it.' We work together, but we don't necessarily share all those thoughts or ideas.
I started out as a farm girl in Iowa, and I dreamed of being an astronaut and an explorer. And I made it.
Even if my job for the day is cleaning the vents or fixing the toilet, it still feels good to be a part of the space program and advancing exploration.
You see billions and billions of stars and recognize that you know some of those have planets, too, and maybe there's life out there, and this is just one of billions of galaxies... and so it gives you this huge perspective of how far we potentially have to go for real exploration.
I came from Iowa, south central Iowa. It was a very rural area. I saw a lot more hogs growing up than I saw people.
I think probably the discoveries made by Hubble Space Telescope have been very dramatic, very amazing.
One of the things I think is really cool that we're testing on board the International Space Station is the water reclamation system.
I think, just philosophically, we're made to explore.
Here, in low earth orbit, we're going around the earth, so we can actually use an Internet protocol phone because we have the appropriate satellites that can get those bandwidths.
One of the most beautiful sights is when the rim of the Earth is bright on one side, and you see this defined line of the atmosphere. You see how close and thin it is. We've got to be careful. We've got to take care of this planet.
I know the first female astronauts selected were definitely an inspiration to me, and so maybe I will be a role model.
In space for a short time, I think most people could survive that. If you're sending an average person who's healthy for a short period of time, I think that's quite doable.
Life in zero gravity is hard to simulate. We practice on the ground what we call 'the day in the life' simulations, but it's just practicing some of the tests. It can't prepare you for the fact that all of your tools float if you don't pay attention to where they are! If you don't Velcro things down, they're gonna float away.
