Then during the mission itself, I used the space shuttle's robot arm to release a satellite into orbit.

The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident.

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.

On a standard space shuttle crew, two of the astronauts have a test pilot background - the commander and the pilot.

No, I think most astronauts recognize that the space shuttle program is very high-risk, and are prepared for accidents.

After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the things that had gone wrong.