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\h        Music.

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\h        What made you want to become an astronaut?

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\h        I thought aviation was incredibly exciting and I liked model rockets.

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\h        I used to fly model rockets when I was in elementary school.

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\h        Just making stuff go fast and high was really exciting. Of course,

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\h        if you would have asked me if I wanted to be an astronaut,

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\h        I would have said absolutely, but it wasn't something I carried as a goal since childhood.

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\h        And then in college I became an engineer and learned how stuff works,

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\h        how to build things and I got a job in an aerospace company and we were building satellites and satellite parts

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\h        and I got to meet a few astronauts and when I met them I realized, hey,

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\h        it's a job and I never even thought of being an astronaut as a job.

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\h        And then I heard they were taking applications for that job, so I thought,

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\h        who doesn't want to be an astronaut? Everybody wants to be an astronaut in my mind. So, got the application,

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\h        filled it in, mailed it off and almost forgot about it.

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\h        I just felt like I bought the lottery ticket, stuck it in my pocket and forgot about it.

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\h        I was really surprised when they gave me a call and asked me if I wanted to interview

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\h        and equally surprised when I got selected for the class of '96.

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\h        What is astronaut training like?

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\h        It's fun. We sort of go back to school. For the first two years we're called astronaut candidates,

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\h        or ASCANs for short and ASCAN training is learning everything you can about NASA so we go to all the centers,

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\h        we learn about what they do. It's all about learning how the space station works,

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\h        when I joined it was all about learning how the space shuttle works and then it's about all the skills

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\h        you're going to need as an astronaut, so some robotics skills and some spacewalking skills

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\h        and some fix-it skills and some speaking skills.

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\h        And so it's sort of going to school for almost two years and then when you come out of it,

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\h        you're an eligible astronaut for assignment and I guess it was four

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\h        years after I joined that I got selected for my first mission.

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\h        What was adapting to space like?

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\h        It felt pretty normal pretty quickly. When we go up on the space shuttle,

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\h        we don't dock until the third day and so that means we have two full days of living in the space shuttle

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\h        to kind of get used to weightlessness, to get used to brushing your teeth in weightlessness,

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\h        putting on your socks, which is comically difficult to do in weightlessness

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\h        and so you've sort of adapted that, doing your everyday stuff in weightlessness.

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\h        Now you get into the station and it's a real benefit, there's just a lot more room.

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\h        The space station is outfitted with lots of computers to provide you some entertainment,

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\h        also some communication with home so you can talk to your family virtually every

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\h        day and so that feels a lot more normal.

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\h        So living on the space station I thought was a very fast adaptation.

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\h        Describe the view from space?

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\h        The two great things about going into space are floating and looking out the window,

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\h        Looking out the window is a spectacular privilege.

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\h        We're two hundred something miles above the Earth, we're going 17,000 mph,

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\h        we cover most of the populated land mass because of the inclination of our orbit.

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\h        To look down at the earth and see both very familiar sights like your hometown and unfamiliar

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\h        sights like the middle of Australia, which is incredibly beautiful,

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\h        that was a motivator every day for space for me. Even out the little window, it was amazing.

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\h        So now you put the helmet on, you put the spacesuit on, you get in the airlock, you close the door behind you,

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\h        you open the door out into space and now your window has become a full, 180-degree mask view.

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\h        And the thing about spacewalks is we're not out there for the view,

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\h        we're there to do the work and I think every spacewalker would tell you, the view is great,

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\h        we think, my memory of the spacewalks really is what's here and I had to force myself to

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\h        have moments where I would appreciate the setting, the view and take some pictures and remember it that way.

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\h        It is spectacular. It's amazing to hold onto the International Space Station,

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\h        you're going 17 and a half thousand miles an hour, and hold on and just sort of look down at

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\h        your feet and 200 miles under your feet, there goes the coast of California

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\h        and, oops, nine minutes later, there goes New York City as you're flying over and then on your way to Europe.

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\h        What was the biggest surprise of spaceflight?

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\h        The biggest surprise to me was that when you're in space, with the weightlessness, it is,

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\h        I call weightlessness 75 percent enjoyable, 75 percent unbelievably fun, 25 percent just a pain in the neck.

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\h        And the pain the neck aspect is you're used to, on the ground you're used to doing things without thinking,

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\h        you're used to writing something down, putting the pen down.

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\h        The pen stays there, the paper stays there and you can turn around and when you turn back,

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\h        the pen's there, paper's there. Well, since everything floats in space, you have to think about absolutely

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\h        everything you touch and everything that you want to touch.

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\h        When you're eating, in space, you have to, generally people will eat one thing at a time because

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\h        to eat your meat and your potatoes and your drink, you have to hold down, tie down,

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\h        find a fixture for each item between if you're going to pick something new.

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\h        Otherwise you're just juggling stuff and it'll get out of control.

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\h        One of the pleasures of coming back to the ground was not having to think about eating,