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" There's a perspective that I've gained as an astronaut that I didn't get from my science activities. In my science activities, I learned by the seat of my pants. Spending 17 years as an astronaut, I learned the NASA formalism of systems engineering as if my life depended on it. Literally. "

John M. Grunsfeld

Perspective

Life

Science

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" I thrive with high-performance challenges in front of me. "

" Being an astronaut, there are not a lot of things that have really shocked me in my life. "

" Science at NASA is all about exploring the endless frontier of the Earth and space. "

" I was not really scared on my spacewalks. We practice so much and need to stay so focused that it has a calming effect on me. I do a kind of visualization and meditation in the airlock prior to going outside, to guide my first activities once I get out in space. "

John M. Grunsfeld

Meditation

Need

" I don't particularly want to jump out of an airplane with a parachute if I don't have to. I don't want to go bungee jumping. I like adventure with a real purpose that I can buy into. "

" The things I like to do involve a lot of mental focus, a combination of physical and mental challenge. That is what mountain climbing is. "

John M. Grunsfeld

Mental

Challenge

" The Hubble Space Telescope, which was designed for extreme servicing, you know, we can fix everything. And the James Webb Space Telescope, where we can fix nothing. It has to work the first time. And it's a very complicated telescope. "

" One of the things that happens in space is that there is a fluid shift. You get a lot of extra pressure, and it fills your sinuses, and the horseradish is a miracle worker for cleaning that out. "

" When I grew up on the south side of Chicago, it was kind of a rough neighborhood, and when my parents saw the prospect of my older sister going to middle school, high school, they decided that we would move to the north side of Chicago, Highland Park, and for me, that was a whole new ballgame. "

" All space exploration is risky. As an astronaut, I had to decide each and every time I went to space whether or not to risk my life for the mission. "

" Going to Mars would make NASA great again. "

" Once we get beyond Mars, which formed from the same stuff as Earth, the likelihood that life is similar to what we find on this planet is very low. "

" Regardless of what dreams you have, work very hard, play very hard, and have fun. "

" Because of Hubble and other telescopes, we've now discovered that there are probably planets around every star, or virtually every star. There are solar systems around most stars. And the fact that we're here on a planet, Earth, means that it's likely there's lots of other Earths out there. "

" I have dedicated my life to answering the great scientific questions of our time and to the incredible adventure of space exploration. "

" What we do at NASA is inspiring. It's reaching, it's visionary, and it inspires people on Earth to try hard things. "

" Here on Earth, we're exposed to asteroids hitting the Earth, eventual changes in the Sun, changes in the Earth's climate, things we're doing to the Earth's climate. If we want to survive, we need to become a multi-planet species. That's further down the road, but the first wave is going to be the explorers. "

" After my spacewalks, I am quite exhilarated but also tired, similar to a workout on Planet Earth. "

John M. Grunsfeld

Planet

Workout

" We don't know how many planets we're going to have to examine before we find life, and not finding it on 10 or 100 doesn't mean it's not there. This may be very tricky. "

" I see no difference between scientific exploration and human exploration. "

" I grew up on the south side of Chicago in the 1960s, and I think there was a synchronicity of events that inspired me to be an astronaut, and, of course, the backdrop is nothing less than Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. That was a time in our nation where we aspired to great things, and we achieved them. "

John M. Grunsfeld

Chicago

Nothing

" The truth is, every single rocket launch off of planet Earth is risky. "

" If I could live in space, I would definitely do that. "

" The strangest thing I've found is that when I got to space, I felt more comfortable in space that I've ever been on Earth before. I just felt this is my home. "

John M. Grunsfeld

Comfortable

Home

" The first thing to know about space food - it is the ambiance; it is the environment. It is not the food. "

" At the age of six, I declared that I wanted to be an astronaut. My mother thought that was just fine, as it would encourage me to learn science, and besides, there really was no chance I would ever actually become an astronaut. "

" When I first went to Hubble, as an astronomer and as a scientist, it was a dream come true. And as an astronaut, the Hubble missions are premiere missions because Hubble is so important to science, so important to humanity, that it's just a very special event. But as an astronomer, it was sort of the holy grail of missions. "

" I think it's really a sign of great American strength that we do invest the money we do in technology, in these hard projects, in NASA. "

" Science fiction has been an inspiration to generations of scientists and engineers, and the film series 'Star Wars' is no exception. "

" When I grew up as a kid, we didn't know there were any other planets outside of our own solar system. It was widely speculated that planet formation was an incredibly rare event and that it's possible that other planets just don't exist in our galaxy, and it's just this special situation where we happen to have planets around our sun. "