Umberto Guidoni Quotes

My job during the EVAs, the spacewalks, is to act as the inside coordinator. I remain on the aft flight deck of the shuttle, and I act in a manner to help the gentlemen outside, my fellow crewmates, who are performing the EVA tasks.

And so, in case we have contingencies and things that we cannot accomplish within the duration of the space walk, we have a buffer, I mean, in order to be able to complete the... what we want to accomplish.

I'll be helping them getting suited up, getting them in the airlock, getting the airlock prepared, and getting them out the hatch, and then talking them through these three spacewalks.

In 2009 I went up on the space shuttle. I was in space for 16 days and docked at the space station for 11 days. The entire crew did five space walks, of which I was involved with three of them. When you're doing a space walk, you always have a buddy with you. It's a very dangerous environment when you're doing a space walk.

We also had to bring with us some desired scientific equipment over to the station as well as assemble new machines. For that, I had to conduct two space walks.

You're very well trained for the spacewalk, so when you go outside, it's not like the movies.

On my first mission, I was the spacewalk supervisor: the person that runs the spacewalk from inside the vehicle. As such, I was the one that closed the hatch when my colleagues left to work outside for six hours. And I was also the person who opens the hatch when they come back, and we repressurize.

The feeling of reduced gravity and the limitations of the space suit resulted in a slow-motion movement. Perhaps not too far from a trampoline, but without the springiness and instability.

The other nice thing about the robes is that they keep you cool in the summer, and we were filming sometimes in Rome, where it was sometimes over 100 degrees.

Abandoning the project was incredibly stressful after having gone through the process of building the room, installing the kiln, collecting the stones, sitting with the kiln day and night as it came to temperature, experiencing the failures.

I had been here five years already, training very hard, learning about the systems, the shuttle, the station systems. But, everything really became real when I started to work with them.

It's always freezing on planes.

My door was open part of the time, and part of the time I tried to get a nap and their voices annoyed me, and I closed it. I kept it open in summer more or less, and closed in winter.

Also we will be carrying food and clothes for the Expedition Two crew. And as well as spare parts for the EVA that will be conducted from the station in the following months.

We're taking up some science experiments, some crystal growth things, we have a refrigerator that carries up some samples, new samples that go into the station, we bring the old ones home; we have a lot of clothing, we have a lot of food-U.S. and Russian food.

You can't have thousands of cars without good computers on the electric grid.

Last year, I made a refrigerator in my basement. And I needed to because I needed to figure how - you know there is no such thing as 'cold.' There is only less heat.

I've been so lucky to have done two spacewalks. If you looked at your wristwatch, I was outside about 15 hours, which is about 10 times around the world. And, you know, there's a whole time dilation, distortion thing.

In the cold, all the blood rushes to your core to protect your heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, and brain. When you leave the water, the blood rushes back to your arms and legs, absorbs that freezing cold, and brings it back to the heart.

Because when we're in space, my job is primarily getting us there and getting us back.

Shortly afterwards, I did a third one to repair the robotic arm of the station. This arm plays a very important role in the ongoing expansion of the station as well as in the deployment of solar panels.

I have invented the Thermometer style.

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.

Finally my dream came true in that there was a possibility that I could travel to the International Space Station. I've gone through the medicals and the training and now I'm officially, by the Russian Space Federation, a cosmonaut in training.

Our mission on Apollo 14 was to be the first to do science on the moon, so we had to be careful about getting everything in during the allotted time.