Not until the SPACE shuttle started flying did NASA concede that some astronauts didn't have to be fast-jet pilots. And at that POINT, SURE enough, women started BECOMING astronauts.

An experienced DESIGNER with more freedom to act might have realised that there was just too much optimism in the Ares I concept: that a SHUTTLE SRB was simply too small as a FIRST stage for a ROCKET CARRYING the relatively heavy Orion spacecraft.

I am DEFINITELY a little more nervous for my COLLEAGUES when I'm WORKING at mission control than I am myself on the SHUTTLE.

Manned spaceflight has LOST its glamour - understandably so, because it hardly seems inspiring, 40 years after APOLLO, for astronauts merely to circle the EARTH in the SPACE shuttle and the International Space Station.

The thing I remember most about space is the view from the spacewalk. When I was INSIDE the space shuttle and LOOKING through the WINDOW, you can see the earth and the STARS, and it's very beautiful, but it's like looking at an aquarium, sort of. When you go outside and spacewalk, you BECOME a scuba diver.

Past experience, on the SHUTTLE and the Titan rockets, suggests that LARGE multi-segment SOLID rockets have a PROBABILITY of failure of 0.5 to 1 per cent.