I feel myself still like a student learning many things doing films.

Even though I have a highly visual imagination, I’ve had to learn just how much can be said onscreen without a word, and David and Steve have taught me that.

I try to be a Sherlock Holmes of botany. It's not enough to enjoy plants – I want to know why they are wilting, to work things out.

In that brief transition time, it felt like the question to ask yourself is what is the biggest learning opportunity? Where can I grow more?

And I think that still is true of this business — which is basically research and development — that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right.

If it’s one thing, obviously it had to have been being selected to make the first manned space flight for the United States. That was competition at its best, not because of the fame or the recognition that went with it, but because of the fact that America’s best test pilots went through this selection process, down to seven guys, and of those seven, I was the first one to go. That always will be the most satisfying thing for me.

I think all of us certainly believed the statistics, which said that probably 88 percent chance of mission success and maybe 96 percent chance of survival. And we were willing to take those odds.

We worked with the engineers in the design and construction and testing phases in those various areas, then we would get back together at the end of the week and brief each other as to what had gone on. So even though we were there competing with each other for the first ride, we were still acting as a team, and helping each other in those days.

I would say that they have to know deep down inside that it’s something that they really want to do, themselves. It’s not to please mommy or daddy, not to please Uncle Harry because he did this, or daddy did that. It has to be because you know you are qualified to do it, and if you apply yourself, you can do it.

No. I think all of us had such confidence in the technology that it was not a question. It was just a question of scheduling and a question of the funds to do it. I think one has to have that kind of an attitude, particularly when you are involved in research and development. You’ve got to believe it’s going to be done eventually.