Bill Shepherd Quotations

When you ride a good rocket ship to orbit, you have a lot to be thankful for.

We really had to load ourselves down on the treadmill. Running on it was not a lot of fun but I think we're all glad that we did it now that we're back on the Earth.

We're having a pretty good day in orbit. We're getting a lot done. Sergei and Yuri are doing a great job as everybody told me, and we're looking forward to a good docking tomorrow.

So I just want to wish everybody down there happy Thanksgiving from the crew of space station Alpha.

I did miss having a shower, particularly to clean my hair up. But otherwise what we did onboard was certainly very workable.

I think the most surprising thing about space was how readily humans can adapt to it.

I think the biggest issue for NASA and for the Russian Space Agency and other folks... (is) everybody has to accept some cultural change to make this happen. It's probably the biggest problem in front of us and it's probably one of the hardest things we have got to go work on.

Survival training is one of the biggest ways that we did that. I think four years of that before we flew made us really ready for life on station and we adapted well.

I was pretty depressed, ... But we had a couple cups of coffee and thought about it and got up the next day and life was normal again.

We're doing very well, actually. Our pre-flight and in-flight experience -- getting good exercise has really helped.

We're moving toward a period where we understand how to have people living and working and being healthy in space indefinitely. There are big questions about how to do that.

We were technically ready to come home, but we're still going through a lot of details.

The space station is a hood ornament , if you will, for how we need to get along in the post Cold War world,

Sail her well, ... I am ready to be relieved.

Another step for the Federation, ... Star Trek.

This mirror allows us to look at how we do things...and we get to compare this with how other countries approach the same problem and this is hugely valuable. This will be one of the legacies of space station.

The most bang for the buck is to dress for the season.

It's good for us. We're happy to stay one more day.

I want them to take that hurt feeling with them. They did not complete something. I want them to think about it all spring and summer, because I'm here to win in March. I never want them to feel this again.

On behalf of the crew on Alpha, I'd like to commend Endeavour and its crew for the tremendous technical challenge and the great achievements ... I can't think of a mission that we've flown in a long time that's been a bigger challenge.

I know my wife is going to be anxious to see me. I'll be happy to get home on time if Captain Wetherbee and the Discovery crew can arrange that.

I really and truly think that my team is not going to feel the pressure because they don't know what to expect. So I think in this case, being young really helps us out.

He's really a hard worker. He works his tail off and hopefully he keeps doing that so that we have a better junior and senior on our hands.

He's young, so he's on one night, off another night. But when he's on, he's really surprised us with what he's capable of doing.

The first expedition on the space station requests permission to take the radio call sign Alpha,