Alan Hoffenblum Quotes

When I was nine, I wanted to be an astronaut but at that time there weren`t any Canadian astronauts. You had to be American or Soviet.

I`ve been lucky enough to fly to space twice.

Our role is to develop techniques that allow us to provide emergency life-saving procedures to injured patients in an extreme, remote environment without the presence of a physician.

So without that Canadian invention we were grounded. And so that was a really important and key part of the mission and Canadians should take real pride in it.

I`ve had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.

And then when we assembled it, the mechanism, which was built in Russia, just worked exactly like everybody said, so it was letter perfect.

And now for Return to Flight, I`m chief of robotics working in the astronaut office in Houston, as a Canadian.

It is spectacular. From about five minutes in, when we knew for sure that we were going to have the weather to go, the smile on my face just got bigger and bigger, and I was just beaming through the whole launch. I mean, it is just an amazing ride.