I wanted to be a secret agent and an astronaut, preferably at the same time.
Now, as an astronaut, I have to bring a Sharpie with me everywhere - so I have a pen to sign autographs.
Then, much later, my next dream was to become an astronaut, and I was fortunate to realize that dream, also.
As an astronaut, especially during launch, half of the risk of a six-month flight is in the first nine minutes.
My odyssey to become an astronaut kind of started in grad school, and I was working, up at MIT, in space robotics-related work; human and robot working together.
There was a small window when I wanted to be an astronaut. It may have coincided with not getting cast in a high school play.
Although as a boy I had dreamed about going into space, I had completely forgotten about that until one day I received a call from an astronaut, who suggested that I should join the program.
I wanted to make sure that the man who found the genie would not take terrible advantage of her, so he needed to be a person of integrity and honor - which is why I made the male lead an astronaut. The rest, as they say, is history.
And just when we were at the end of our design process there was the news that the Italian government and the U.S. government had signed an agreement to fly the first Italian astronaut on that flight.
My obsession with outer space is my way of being different. I make astronaut music. It takes an astronaut so long to get to space - that's how long it takes to catch up on my music.
And, so I set my goals on astronaut because, as a military aviator, it was, I considered that to be about the peak of a flying career.
One thing I probably share with everyone else in the astronaut office is composure.
I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.
I think doing something of your life is something that you've got deep inside, whether it's to, whether you want to be an astronaut or a, whether you want to do science, or whether you want to be a movie star, or whatever.
Being a rock & roll star has become as legitimate a career option as being an astronaut or a policeman or a fireman.
I want to be a lawyer, a dancer, an actress, a mother, a wife, a children's author, a distance runner, a poet, a pianist, a pet store owner, an astronaut, an environmental and humanitarian activist, a psychiatrist, a ballet teacher, and the first woman president.
Any astronaut can tell you you've got to do everything you can to learn about your life support system and then do everything you can to take care of it.
I actually wanted to be an astronaut, but I don't have a mathematical brain.
In the Astronaut Office we're never totally out of training, we always keep our hand in it. But after five years, things have changed and so it's been good to get back into the flow and relearn a lot of things.
I never declared I wanted to be an astronaut, as I considered that was presumptuous.
I grew up in Greeley, Colorado, in a house without a television set. I was a very nerdy kid: I used to play 'astronaut' and eat bouillon as astronaut food. We also had tons of books.
What everyone in the astronaut corps shares in common is not gender or ethnic background, but motivation, perseverance, and desire - the desire to participate in a voyage of discovery.
Two months after I got out of test pilot school, I saw an advert that said NASA was recruiting more astronauts. The best job you could have as a test pilot was being an astronaut, so I volunteered.
I'd love to be an astronaut. I bet you get a better understanding of our planet seeing it from a distance.
Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to be an astronaut.
I was a frustrated astronaut all my life. I grew up at a time when space seemed to have no boundaries, and lots of us presumed humans would be living on the moon and landing on Mars.
The clothes are different: pre-dog, I used to be very finicky and self-conscious about how I looked; now I schlep around in the worst clothing - big heavy boots, baggy old sweaters, a hooded down parka from L.L. Bean that makes me look like an astronaut.
I flew fighters for the Navy in San Diego for three years, went and did my post-graduate education, and then I was a test pilot in Patuxent River, Maryland, for a few years. I was back in the fleet in the Navy when I was selected to come back here to NASA to become an astronaut.
As a kid, I was obsessed with space. Well, I was obsessed with nuclear science too, to a point, but before that, I was obsessed with space, and I was really excited about, you know, being an astronaut and designing rockets, which was something that was always exciting to me.
I'd love to go back to space, I don't know any astronaut who doesn't want to.
That I even get to play a sold-out show where people know the words and I'm singing about things I'm connected to is such a blessing. It's the equivalent of a nine-year-old saying, 'I want to be an astronaut when I grow up,' and then getting to go to the moon.
I always wanted to be an astronaut.
On the day I started college in 1979, no woman had ever been on the United States Supreme Court or served as the Speaker of the House. None had been an astronaut or the solo anchor of a network evening news broadcast. Not one had been president of an Ivy League college or run a serious campaign for president.
There's a lot of things I nerd out over. Quantum Mechanics. I also love Dungeons and Dragons. I want to be an astronaut.
To become an astronaut, someone has to have a dream of his own to do something that he or she has always wanted to do, then commit himself to making that dream come true.