Nickname: Shep

Personal data: 51 years old, married, no children.

Claim to fame: commander, Expedition 1, International Space Station.

Previous spaceflights: three shuttle missions, totaling 440 hours in space.

Past life: Navy SEAL

Newfound philosophy: “Take every day one at a time.”

Beloved pet: Jake, a 2-year old Labrador retriever.

Likes: tinkering. “I was always in trouble with my dad as a kid because I took stuff apart that I couldn’t get back together again. I find that really enjoyable. I’m looking forward to finding out where I can do that on the station without getting into trouble again.”

Candidate for Mars mission: “No, not if it’ll take three years … It’s within our technical grasp to get to Mars a lot faster. The future is not about going to Mars, it’s about what’s next. We should be developing really fast travel so we can go elsewhere.”

Candidate for future space station mission: “If it were to duplicate the process that I’ve been through to get this flight done, I’d say no. It’s taken four years. If I could do things again in a much more efficient manner, I would think it over.”

Recent accomplishment: amateur radio license. “Now I can use the ham radio in orbit.”

Window time: “I think people get very blasé about looking out the window from orbit. I’m hoping we will have the resources aboard to enable us to pull up detailed maps so we can get more out of it … The Russians also are very adept at training cosmonauts for looking at the night sky and recognizing stars. We don’t do much of that in Houston and I’m looking forward to doing that as well.”

Advice from former Mir astronauts: “Some things that you do in orbit are very difficult and you just have to be ready for them.”

Taking along: not sure. “I packed the CDs and the books up so long ago, I can’t remember them all. One book I do have is The Sand Pebbles. It’s about a Navy guy in China on a gunboat.”

Why in command: “It was personally important to me. I made the request and it was saluted. I don’t know what would have happened if they had said no. The issue is that the International Space Station is not a U.S. endeavor. It is not a Russian enterprise. It’s something different … I did not see that that sense was going to be a part of the expedition unless whoever was going to be the commander felt that way.”