Before we had airplanes and astronauts, we really thought that there was an actual place beyond the clouds, somewhere over the rainbow. There was an actual place, and we could go above the clouds and find it there.

While we've taken seeds into space, and astronauts on the International Space Station have eaten lettuce they've grown, we haven't produced fruit in space, so we can't pollinate something.

The purpose of going to Mars is for humans to first begin to occupy, permanently, another planet in the solar system. The astronauts or pilgrims, whatever you might call them, are going to be very historically unique human beings.

So most astronauts getting ready to lift off are excited and very anxious and worried about that explosion - because if something goes wrong in the first seconds of launch, there's not very much you can do.

One thing I probably share with everyone else in the astronaut office is composure.

When many astronauts go to space, they see the insignificant size of the earth and vastness of space, and they become very religious, because they have seen the Signs of Allah.

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'd love to go back to space, I don't know any astronaut who doesn't want to.

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 wish that I was one of those kids who grew up saying I always wanted to be an astronaut and was really good at science and math. But that wasn't really the case. I always liked it, but I never believed I was one of the smart kids.

I remember in 1967, when there was that terrible fire on NASA's Apollo 1 rocket that killed three astronauts, my father made pure oxygen and we lit this tiny cup and burned it. Suddenly, we had an unbelievable jet and a fire. You just could see exactly what had happened.

My name is Leland Tyler Wayne. My mom wanted to give me a name where, no matter what I wanted to do, I'd be able to do it. An astronaut. President. Whatever.

Sometimes astronauts feel a little ill or get minor scrapes. I trained as a crew medical officer to do basic treatment.

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 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.

I am deeply grieved by the loss of the crew of Columbia. I express my sincere condolences to the families and friends of the astronauts. I believe that their names will remain as the bright sparkling stars in the universe and will light the way for those who will follow them on the difficult roads of space exploration.

I'm not sure if they do this in the States, but in Korea, until high school, on your graduation diploma there's a line that states your future goal. Kids write 'president' or 'astronaut,' or whatever. I always wrote 'singer.'

The food isn't too bad. It's very different from the food that the astronauts ate in the very early days of the space program.

Mental fitness is obviously important to being an astronaut, but so it physical fitness. For example, space walks are extremely physically demanding. We train for them in a giant swimming pool and we wear this suit that weighs about 300 pounds.

Ever since the environmental movement was sparked by photos of the whole Earth taken by astronauts onboard Apollo Lunar Modules, I've seen planetary exploration as an extension of a reverence and care for Earth.

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.

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.

Astronauts cannot pick their nicknames and can only get their nicknames from other astronauts. Any astronaut who tries to give himself a cool nickname will regret it by getting just the opposite from his astronaut friends.

Every one of today's smartphones has thousands of times more processing power than the computers that guided astronauts to the moon.