Julie Payette Quotes

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

The space shuttle has been a fantastic vehicle. It is unlike any other thing that we've ever built. Its capabilities have carried several hundred people into space.

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.

My first mission was six and a half months. We weren't exactly sure how long it was going to be because I went up and back on the space shuttle, which was dependent on weather for launch and landing.

Every shuttle mission's been successful.

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.

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.

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.

I've had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.

Once you get into the spacecraft, you're on your way, you've got a mission, you're focused, and it's really exciting.

After being once in space, I was keen to go back there. But it didn't happen.

Having the opportunity to fly the first flight of something like a space shuttle was the ultimate test flight.

As someone who flew two space capsules and twice landed in the ocean, I can attest from personal experience how much logistics work is needed to get you home.

One of the jokes on our flight is that, if we have a normal entry day going, the plan is for me... to actually take the orbiter first and fly it for maybe 10 or 15 seconds and then hand it on over to Scooter.

So, whenever Scooter was the Pilot, he never had a chance to fly the orbiter. So, the joke is: I'm going to have a chance to fly it first and hand it over to him.

He who commands an Apollo flight will not command a second one.

Spaceflight, especially in the Mercury spacecraft, clearly wasn't going to be much like flying an airplane.

The excitement really didn't start to build until the trailer - which was carrying me, with a space suit with ventilation and all that sort of stuff - pulled up to the launch pad.

Rendezvous day is the third day of our mission, and that's a big day for us.

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.

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.

NASA was going to pick a public school teacher to go into space, observe and make a journal about the space flight, and I am a teacher who always dreamed of going up into space.

You know, west Texas is already beautiful to view from the ground. I can't even imagine what it must look like as you're floating down to Earth in a capsule making its return trip from outer space.

The first time I went into space was just so much more than you could imagine or prepare yourself for.

I was the 128th human in space. So I didn't really sweat about it.