In training future astronauts, the first and most important lesson is collaboration and helping one another, as some very complex obstacles must be overcome.

At the space training centre many tests are therefore based on collaboration and only those candidates able to collaborate constantly succeed in graduating.

Once involved in a space mission, astronauts need to collaborate so that they are familiar with every small detail of the ship. All operations and movements are also constantly monitored from the control centre on Earth by a complementary team.

There is no better example of international cooperation than that set by astronauts from several countries taking part in space missions, because survival depends on cooperation.

Spacewalks and extravehicular work always involve the constant collaboration of at least 3 people. One "choreographs" every movement of the two astronauts who leave the ship.

Being so closely linked and dependent upon one another in space missions means that once the mission is over, we continue collaborating as an act of instinct.

The Commercial Spaceflight Association I now chair comprises many competing companies, which are working to open up a market for technical development and space tourism. Even as competitors, however, they are all united in a federation, because what binds us are the challenges we face together.

I would like to end my speech with a quote from Theodore Roosevelt, which was in my "blue book" of training for astronauts:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt