it was so exciting. were you surprised by the reaction? i was a little bit. i received a lot of pictures that people took with their cell phones, from washington, d.c., a lot of my wife s former colleagues sent photos of discovery flying over, a lot of excitement. your wife being former congress woman gabby giffords. on the plane is bill rickey, the pilot, in nasa aircraft operator is his formal title. do you know him? yeah, at our aircraft operations division at johnson space center we have a bunch of research pilots. he s one of those, a pilot in t-38 training airplane we use, also pilot on the shuttle carrier aircraft. does it feel different flying that with the shuttle on top of it than it would flying a normal 747? well, absolutely.