As with most phobias, the fear of flying does make some sense, but if ever there was a fear worth quashing then this is it. After all, life is short, and there's a great big world to explore out there.
I used to skip out of high school and go flying. It was just one of those things, I thought it was kind of a cool thing to do. I never thought about doing that as a profession, but I started checking things out and I found out there was a flight school down in Daytona Beach, called Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
We've gone from, in the '50s and '60s, being very optimistic about the future, where the future is all spaceships and The Jetsons and flying cars, to where we were just sure the future was going to be a massive pile of rubble.
I am terrified of flying. I am a wreck right before I get on an airplane. That, and the ocean. I can only get in there for 10 minutes, I have this strong urge to run out and I won't go back in for the rest of the day. I've always been like that.
I'm quite scared of flying, and especially helicopters, I don't like them at all.
When you see a fly flitting around your hair or your potato salad, you might see an annoyance. But in my lab, you really see a marvelous machine: arguably the most sophisticated flying device on the planet.
Sometimes when I'm watching television and something, an image, will come on that has to do with 9/11 or some of these families telling their stories, or children talking about drawing pictures of airplanes flying into towers, you know, I find myself still choking up.
Flying a good airplane doesn't require near as much attention as a motor car.
My father, naturally, spoiled me when I was allowed to see him - flying to New York from Washington, alone, in those terrifying planes. He'd take me to Danny Kaye movies and rent a dog for me to walk in the park on Sunday - a different dog every Sunday - and then to have butterscotch sundaes with almonds at Schrafft's.
The big mathematical challenge for flying robots is making them move in six dimensions: x, y, z, pitch, yaw and roll. We create 3-D obstacle courses in the lab - windows, doors, hula-hoops taped to posts - and ask the robots to fly through. It looks like a Harry Potter Quidditch match.
I fly an aeroplane, and I think a lot about how much I do not want ever to run into an optimistic air traffic controller. I just don't. I want a guy down there who's just waiting for the worst crash possible and petrified that it's going to happen on his watch. And then I feel safe flying into his territory.
There definitely will be flying cars, but whether there'll be flying cars for most people to use, it'll probably take a long time to straighten everything out, all the rules and hassles. It'll take a while to figure out how to keep people from crashing into each other.
Hoping to instill my love of learning in other children, I taught my first class at a local elementary school the year my first book, 'Flying Fingers,' debuted; since then, I have spoken at hundreds of schools, classrooms and conferences around the world.
I used to hate flying. I would sit there, rigid, convinced that if I relaxed, the plane would drop out of the sky.
Funding for the original manned Voyager Mars Program was scratched in 1968, before humans had gotten out of Low Earth Orbit. Mid-'60s plans for a Venus fly-by with astronauts actually flying by it met the same fate.
Same with anyone who's been flying for years and loves it still... we're part of a world we deeply love. Just as musicians feel about scores and melodies, dancers about the steps and flow of music, so we're one with the principle of flight, the magic of being aloft in the wind!
That is how it stiffens, my vision of that seaside childhood. My father died; we moved inland. Whereon those nine first years of my life sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle - beautiful, inaccessible, obsolete: a fine, white, flying myth.
Flying commercial airlines has become an all-too-often unpleasant experience.
It's been cool to catch up, but I think I'm done with my exes. To be honest, I went out with flying colors on the majority of them.
I've had fish come up on stage, and it's pretty disgusting. I try and discourage that. I discourage anything flying up on stage, actually.
We took up the offer with the BBC, and that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. I didn't have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went.
Basically, most good science in space flight has to do with the behavior of the human body in space. That is where we are lacking info, and where info can only be obtained by flying in space.
In the heyday of the Oscars, there were electric sparks flying. When Cher went in her fabulous Bob Mackie dress and her Mohawk, and Bjoerk with her swan dress. Then we thought it was bad taste; now I think it should have been the best dress because she stood out.
If I still had my legs, I would be in line for a battalion command, and instead, I'm flying a desk.
The criticism is, once I get something flying, I lose interest in it.
The idea of flying in general does not appeal to me. I can barely understand why people want to fly at all, other than that it's occasionally necessary.
There's a film that I wrote that I want to do called 'The Grey,' which is about a group of pipeline workers in Alaska flying back into civilization after being remote for a number of months. The 737 they're on goes down, and they begin to be hunted by a pack of rogue wolves.
I was doing shows and flying economy, and nobody ever fed me. Or I'd be staying in hotels so cheap that by the time I'd get in, there wasn't any room service. I didn't eat for a long time. Not on purpose. You'd be on shoots with bad food or get on a plane, and the food would be so disgusting you couldn't eat it.
I do have a bit of a fear of heights. But I don't get scared of heights when I am flying a plane.
When I compete, I love a huge crowd, expectation, pressure, and I like to have nerves: the butterflies flying and my hands shaking. This way, I am completely amped, focused, and ready; otherwise, I tend to be to relaxed, content, and don't perform at my maximal potential.
The optimum amount of sugar in a product became known as the 'bliss point.' Food inventors and scientists spend a huge amount of time formulating the perfect amount of sugar that will send us over the moon and send products flying off the shelves.
I am fascinated by Omega's history. Particularly the First World War stuff, when they made watches for the flying corps, and the NASA side of it.
The advantage of knowing about risks is that we can change our behavior to avoid them. Of course, it is easily observed that to avoid all risks would be impossible; it might entail no flying, no driving, no walking, eating and drinking only healthy foods, and never being touched by sunshine. Even a bath could be dangerous.
Our robots are signing up for online learning. After decades of attempts to program robots to perform complex tasks like flying helicopters or surgical suturing, the new approach is based on observing and recording the motions of human experts as they perform these feats.
You can fix your body, your heart, your diabetes. In Korea, China, and India, there are people who do yoga. They go to the mountains and do breath-in, breath-out meditation. They can live 500 years and not get sick. Keeping their bodies for a long time is possible; even flying in the sky is possible.
People say, 'Where do you live?' and I say that theoretically, I live in London, but basically that's just where I go to change my suitcase. Otherwise, I'm always flying somewhere.