I do have a bit of a fear of heights. But I don't get scared of heights when I am flying a plane.

I cannot wait to get up there and experience space travel for the first time. It will be a dream come true.

I am not going to pretend that flying a spaceship will be as safe as getting in a 747 with four engines for a flight across the Atlantic.

I can still remember them wheeling the black and white TV sets into our classroom at school so we could watch the men landing on the Moon, and that obviously had a huge impact. I later found out those people flying Apollo were ex-military test pilots, so I decided to join the Air Force and become a test pilot.

By my mid-30s, I just thought, 'This is not going to happen. I am never going to become an astronaut in the U.K.'

I have watched SS2 evolve over the years into an incredible vehicle that is going to open up space to more people than ever before.

In any aircraft you fly, you always think about what can go wrong, and you plan for it in advance. You always have back-up plans.

Not long after I got my test pilot qualification, I realised there was no manned space flight programme in the U.K., and there was unlikely to be one.

I want to get to the moon. I want to go to Mars.

It's very sad that there's going to be a hiatus in manned space flight from the U.S. The Shuttle was a fantastic, hugely complex vehicle. It was inevitable it would come to an end, but this is the opportunity for the commercial world to get involved. As the Shuttle era ends, another window of opportunity opens.