Intellectually, I'd known I was venturing out into space yet still the sight of it shocked me, profoundly. In a spacesuit, you're not aware of taste, smell, touch. The only sounds you hear are your own breathing and, through the headset, disembodied voices. You're in a self-contained bubble, cut off, then you look up from your task and the universe rudely slaps you in the face. It's overpowering, visually, and no other senses warn you that you're about to be attacked by raw beauty.

Early success is a terrible teacher. You’re essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can’t do it. You don’t know how.

Weightlessness doesn't feel the same on a huge spaceship [the International Space Station] where you can move around freely as it does on a tiny rocket ship where there's nowhere to go. Imagine floating in a pool without water, if you can, then endow yourself with a few superpowers: you can move huge objects with the flick of a wrist, hang upside down from the ceiling like a bat, tumble through the air like an Olympic gymnast. You can fly. And all of it is effortless.