Zitat des Tages über Raumstation / Space Station:
I'm really looking forward to it, if you can imagine floating weightless, watching the world pour by through the big bay window of the space station playing a guitar; just a tremendous place to think about where we are in history.
For the last several years and culminating in six months in orbit next year, I've been training for my third space flight. This one is almost in a category completely different than the previous two, specifically to live in on the space station for six months, to command a space ship and to fly a new rocket ship.
International Space Station, it's huge, I would say, space building. When you just can see it - and you can see it actually from five kilometers perfectly well when the sun is rising - and you can't imagine, or can't believe, that this miracle was built by people, by humans.
The Space Shuttle will stop directly below the Space Station and Sergei and I will be looking out two different windows looking straight down at the Space Shuttle.
It's important to bring things back from the Space Station because, unlike somebody living at the house where the garbage truck comes by twice a week, they don't have that in space.
This is a really big space station. We do a lot of various kinds of work here, different kinds of science experiments; we have over 400 different experiments going on at any one time in different areas, from basic science research to medical technology, that hopefully will benefit more people on Earth.
I've always thought space station is a great name. It should be like a gas station where we go for service and supplies before heading further out.
It's really a good feeling to know that we put this up there, that it's working, that all these people's plans that worked so hard came together and things fit and we've got a real space station.
And since Italy was involved in the space station as well as signed an agreement with NASA. And when the possibility to enter the 1996 Mission Specialist class.
I think the curiosity of mankind, that we want something unknown. Like, 500 years ago, humankind wanted to know what the other side of the ocean is, and it was a very risky project, and then we decided that probably we can fly; let's fly higher. And now we're flying space station, and still it's not enough for us: we want to know what's beyond.
I think the crux of the matter was that if we were going to become partners in, for example, the International Space Station, we had to gain the respect of a country like the United States and particularly its space organization, NASA.
If the United States commits to the goal of reaching Mars, it will almost certainly do so in reaction to the progress of other nations - as was the case with NASA, the Apollo program, and the project that became the International Space Station.
I don't think the space station will ever do anything for exploration. Putting people up there for a year or more is the only way you will get anywhere near the exploration concept.
A lot of these things will fly in later forms on the space station themselves, or a later form of that research will, once they kind of find out some of the basics from flying it on shuttle.
While on the space station, I kept up with news a couple of ways - Mission Control sent daily summaries, and I would scan headlines on Google News when we had an Internet connection, which was about half the time.
I think a good life-work balance is important, and that's even more important in some cases on the space station.
I don't think the space station is innovative. Going to the moon was innovative because we had no idea how to do it.
I still dream about being on the space station with the feeling of being weightless. The weightlessness is the most amazing, relaxing and natural feeling.
When you talk to crews that went to Mir or have gone up to International Space Station, they say that you go through different phases of adaptation or getting used to the space environment.
We should not have assumed that a political space station could be built.
Tinkering is something we need to know how to do in order to keep something like the space station running. I am a tinkerer by nature.
Well, we have two major goals. The most important one is to get the station arm on board the station, because that's this really milestone in the space station building since from now on they will be using this arm to continue building the space station.
Canada has made a strong commitment as a partner in the International Space Station and, like the other partners, wishes to see the assembly of this unique orbiting laboratory continue.
After the Shuttle checks out on its two upcoming flights, it will be ready to take larger components up to the International Space Station later this fall.
NASA will send up a big sun shade that will be in orbit between the earth and sun and deflect 2 or 3 percent of the sunshine back into space. It would be cheaper than the international space station.
When the International Space Station is finally launched, it will be fitted with special nickel-hydrogen batteries weighing a total of several tons, with a lifetime of just five years, requiring spares to be brought up from Earth at literally astronomical expense.
Through these ongoing activities and possibly in the future, a Canadian will go live and work on the International Space Station and we will continue to make Canadians proud of our achievements in space.
We've got to get rid of the stuff on the space station somehow. So we do have a pretty significant capability to bring back stuff on SpaceX that you might not imagine.
What we get from building a space station, the economic return, the science return, is very, very important to our nation, to our economy.
I enjoy going out to the plants, the factories where just some sub-element maybe of the orbiter or the space station is built. Those people take such pride in that component, and they build it to perfection, and it's just a pleasure to see that.
I feel privileged and honored to have flown. It's been a tremendous ride, looking back on the legacy and accomplishments, like the Hubble telescope and the launching of the International Space Station in 1998.
Manned spaceflight has lost its glamour - understandably so, because it hardly seems inspiring, 40 years after Apollo, for astronauts merely to circle the Earth in the space shuttle and the International Space Station.
We continue to not only operate the International Space Station but to increase its capabilities as well as commercial contributions.
Something people don't recognize is that being on the space station is probably a lot like being in some kind of confinement - like isolation.
There is a project that's underway called the interplanetary Internet. It's in operation between Earth and Mars. It's operating on the International Space Station. It's part of the spacecraft that's in orbit around the Sun that's rendezvoused with two planets.
We used to have a crew of three on board the space station and even at one time a crew of two people, so it's something we can adjust to.