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[ Music ]

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>> My first flight
was two weeks,

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and a lot had to get done.

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I distinctly remember
the point when I stopped

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and thought, "I did it.

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I'm here. My goal was
to be an astronaut,

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and now I'm in space."

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I remember seeing
the beauty of Earth,

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but I don't remember any
more profound thoughts

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about it at that point.

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I think it was when I got
into my long-duration flight

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and spent a little more time
that I really just started

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to take it in a little bit more.

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[ Music ]

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The entire experience is
actually very surreal.

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First, you're launched on a
rocket and you're pulling Gs

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as you're going out
of the atmosphere.

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You're looking at the
Earth for the first time.

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You're floating.

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You're, everything is different,
and it just is all just

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such a different experience that
it almost doesn't seem real.

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In fact, when I did my Space
Shuttle flight for two weeks

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in 2008, when I got back,

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you could have convinced
me I never went, probably,

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if there weren't pictures.

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This experience is so
unusual and so different

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than anything you've ever done
in your life that it's hard

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to grasp it all, and I
was very excited, then,

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when I got assigned to a long
duration, because I thought

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that it's going to
burn in my memory

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and it was the same thing.

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I came back and my
memories were there,

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but it almost didn't seem real.

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[ Music ]

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Looking at the Earth
for the first time,

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you just notice the
vibrancy of it.

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It's so bright.

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Pictures don't do it justice.

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It's equivalent to
me backpacking

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out in the mountains, where
you're trekking along,

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and then you come to a clearing

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and you're overlooking some
valley and the sun is setting

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and it is, you're, like, how
could this get any prettier?

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And you take a picture, and
then you go back and look

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at the pictures later, and you
never had that feeling again.

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It never brings about
the feeling that it did.

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And same with watching a
beautiful sunset or sunrise.

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I have not seen a picture
that gives me the same feeling

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that I felt when I
looked with my own eyes.

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[ Music ]

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It started to make me understand
that everything is connected.

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What is happening in the ocean

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over here can affect what is
happening on land over here.

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It's just all one being,
and it's all interconnected,

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and so I think we tend
to live in our bubble

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of our world that's here,
and it's hard to think

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about other people on the
other side of the world

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and be empathetic
toward them, really,

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because you don't know them and
you don't know their situations.

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And I've found seeing Earth
really changing that perspective

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for me and listening to a news
story in the morning and flying

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over that particular part of
the world in the afternoon,

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it really affected me,
and then just realizing,

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I mean, that's home.

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Often, we think,
"Home," and, you know,

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right now home is
Houston, Texas,

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and childhood home is Minnesota.