It's really a good feeling to know that we put this up there, that it's working, that all these people's plans that worked so hard came together and things fit and we've got a real space station.
We launch when we're kind of in the same orbit that they are in terms of being matched up in inclination in space, and we're just in a little different altitude.
I grew up watching a lot of the coverage of the early U.S. space program, all the way back starting with Mercury and then through Gemini and Apollo and of course going to the moon as the main part of the Apollo program.
A lot of these things will fly in later forms on the space station themselves, or a later form of that research will, once they kind of find out some of the basics from flying it on shuttle.
I appeared on a show with Jonathan Harris on it-the Bill Dana show-even before Lost In Space. Someone gave me a tape of it in the past year, but in all these years we hadn't remembered.
I couldn't have left my career as an actor on a better note than to have done a cameo in the Lost In Space movie. Doing this part is the highlight of my career. What a way to leave the profession!
I would have liked it to have stayed serious and have the adventures of a family lost in space. This isn't to take anything away from Jonathan and the Robot. I watch his performance today and he still makes me laugh.
In our first season we had a 22 rating. Today Seinfeld, a hit show, gets a 15. Lost in Space actually had a bigger audience than Star Trek got at that time.
The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel.
