I was a military brat; we moved all around.

One of my favorite places on the planet is a place in northern Michigan: Long Lake in Traverse City.

The building of the International Space Station is something wonderful, and it will show us how to take the next step beyond low-Earth orbit.

My first date was with Endeavour, and my last date is going to be with Endeavour, as far as space shuttles are concerned.

Many science fiction writers are literary autodidacts who focus on the genre primarily as a literature of ideas rather than as a pure art form or a tool for the introspective examination of the human condition. I'm not entirely at ease with that self-description.

My interest in science started quite early. My earliest school recollection, from age 6, is actually of mathematics, realizing that one could fill an entire page with digits and never come to the largest possible number, so I saw what was meant by infinity.

Many of the alarmists on global warming, they've got a problem because the science doesn't back them up.

Science is one of a handful of things that defines us as a very special species. It is amazing how far we have been able to get and how accurate our predictions are. I think understanding how the universe was born is very important. It really gives us a perspective on many things.