Duane G. Carey American Astronaut Quotations

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.

And, I was really impressed with how beautiful our country was and how friendly the people were.

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.

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

And, actually it was interesting because I had done a lot of traveling in the United States and Canada and Mexico on my motorcycle; and I was really, it was the first time I had really gotten out of the Minnesota area to speak of.

Obviously, as a jet fighter pilot, everybody looks forward to the ascent; all that power, you know, that seven million pounds of thrust going uphill.

I think a lot of people, myself included, like to be... like to do expeditions and trips. To me, this feels a little bit like a motorcycle trip.

Well, let me tell you: when I'm in space, I'm looking forward to looking back and seeing the Earth. I just can't imagine what it looks like.

I've always been, since I was fairly young, I've been interested in motorcycles and have owned them and ridden them and raced them, things like that.

It's all done by computer. The jets will fire and it'll just be in the attitude that we need to have it in to come back to Earth.

It's very important, especially during a Hubble mission, that we have a lot of photographic evidence of the condition of the telescope.

I had, before I went to college, I had taken a few years off after high school and really had, I guess in those days, I had no intentions of going to college.

But, I have to tell you that, astronauts, rookie astronauts after they land, they say that they found the training to be more than adequate.