Hello From Above Our Magnificent Planet Earth.

I Have A Computer Screen Near My Seat Where I Monitor The Overall Health Of The Vehicle And Pick Up Any Problems That Might Be Occurring Early On Or Once We See Any Kind Of A Malfunction Or Anything Unusual That's Happening, We Can Look At The Data And Figure Out What That Is.

I Can't Think Of Anything Specific Growing Up That Pointed Me Toward Nasa At All. I Was Interested In The Moon Landings Just About The Same As Everyone Else Of My Generation. But I Never Really Thought About Being An Astronaut Or Working In Space Myself.

It's Such A Long Mission And We Get To Spend So Much Time In Space... We're Doing Such Exciting Research. And I Don't Want To Overemphasize The Life Science Research, But As A Physician The Life Science Research That We're Doing Is Extremely Exciting.

Things Are Going Very Smoothly. As Expected, There Are Some Minor Glitches, And The Eight Minutes That It Took Us To Get To Orbit, We Trained Months And Months For, And Didn't Have To Use Any Of That Preparation, Other Than Being Aware And Ready.

The Navy's Paid For You To Go Through School, And Then They Need Doctors To Go Out And Take Care Of People Who Are In Various Different Parts Of The World. I Decided To Pay Back My Time First As An Undersea Medical Officer. I Was Stationed In Scotland.