Ulrich Walter Quotes

Zero gravity is such an alien environment - completely different from everything we've grown up with every single day of our lives. And it's incomprehensible how much better it was than I anticipated it would be.

Everyone who's been in space would, I'm sure, welcome the opportunity for a return to the exhilarating experiences there.

We were only on orbit a little over two days, so we had no adverse effects from being weightless.

We wanted to be in great shape, we wanted to be able to cope with zero gravity, we wanted to be able to cope with accelerations and decelerations and so on. So all of us trained so that we were probably in the best physical condition we had ever been in up until that point.

The real pleasure was having the chance to enjoy being weightless, and the other was to spend some time looking out at this beautiful Earth that we're all lucky to inhabit.

The microgravity or the very, very low amount of gravity that we have up in space forces some changes in different processes. It forces changes in us as human beings.

I could have gone on flying through space forever.

When we first get to space, we feel sick. Your body is really confused. You're dizzy. Your lunch is floating around in your belly because you're floating. What you see doesn't match what you feel, and you want to throw up.

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.

Adaption of the human body in space is not yet mastered. As soon as you hit space, you feel your body is going through a period of mutation. There's no blood in your head; you have a hard time swallowing. We're not born to naturally be in space.

Now, I've never flown in space; but the folks who have say that on landing day, you know, you've just spent maybe a week and a half, sometimes two weeks in orbit and you're used to the things happening slowly in space.

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.

A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward space travel.

This has been a great experience for me. The first couple of days you don't always feel too well. You adjust to the fluid shifting, how to fly through space without hitting things or anybody else. But then you get in a groove.

When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.

The reason space missions need artificial gravity is clear: humans simply did not evolve to live in zero gravity.

That's really why I want to go to space - I want to be weightless for so long that it gets boring.

The thought of being in space, and kind of enclosed, I find would be very claustrophobic. I think I would panic in that situation.

When you lift off, the pressure is supposed to be maximum. But actually, it was very benign. Very enjoyable. But as soon as the engines cut off and you get to zero gravity, you felt as if you were being pushed off your seat. You feel disoriented. You don't feel aligned with anything. I felt for a few good hours that I was falling.

In space, if you push, you are usually going somewhere, so staying on the treadmill was a challenge at first, even with the harness.

The first 6 hours of being in orbit were a little difficult on my stomach. I think things just didn't know where to go!

I've flown in space four times now, so it's going to be hard in that respect, but I certainly look forward to going back to Earth. I've been up here for a really long time and sometimes, when I think about it, I feel like I've lived my whole life up here.

Adjusting to space is easier than adjusting to Earth for me.

Just like the bones and muscles, the heart is designed to work in one gravity here on Earth, so when you put the heart in space, it operates differently and changes shape.

Gravity is a really heavy force and you don't realize how heavy it is until you haven't felt it for six and a half months.