Sally Ride Quotes

If we want scientists and engineers in the future, we should be cultivating the girls as much as the boys.

Three Secrets to Success: Be willing to learn new things. Be able to assimilate new information quickly. Be able to get along with and work with other people.

All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.

It takes a couple of years just to get the background and knowledge that you need before you can go into detailed training for your mission.

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

There are lots of opportunities out there for women to work in these fields, ... Girls just need support, encouragement and mentoring to follow through with the sciences.

Our future lies with today's kids and tomorrow's space exploration.

The stars don't look bigger, but they do look brighter.

When you're getting ready to launch into space, you're sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen.

We need to make science cool again.

Science is fun. Science is curiosity. We all have natural curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It's posing questions and coming up with a method. It's delving in.

The thing I'll remember most about the flight is that it was fun. In fact, I'm sure it was the most fun that I'll ever have in my life.

I've spent my whole life not talking to people, and I don't see why I should start now.

I liked math - that was my favorite subject - and I was very interested in astronomy and in physical science.

Rocket science is tough, and rockets have a way of failing.

I think it's important for little girls growing up, and young women, to have one in every walk of life. So from that point of view, I'm proud to be a role model!

I have been a bit of a risk-taker all my life.

I can't remember a single time [my parents] ever told me not to do something I wanted to do.

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.

The rockets light! The shuttle leaps off the launch pad in a cloud of steam and a trail of fire.

It's easy to sleep floating around - it's very comfortable. But you have to be careful that you don't float into somebody or something!

Different astronauts sleep in different ways.

The pressure suit helps if something goes wrong during launch or re-entry - astronauts have a way to parachute off the shuttle. The suits protect you from loss of pressure in case of emergency.

We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see hurricanes form.

I did not come to NASA to make history.

Because I was a tennis player, Billie Jean King was a hero of mine.

I have a lot of common sense. I know what needs to be done and how to approach it. I have an ability to work with people on large enterprises.

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

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

Yes, I did feel a special responsibility to be the first American woman in space.

I do a lot of running and hiking, and I also collect stamps - space stamps and Olympics stamps.

My background is in physics, so I was the mission specialist, who is sort of like the flight engineer on an airplane.

The astronauts who came in with me in my astronaut class - my class had 29 men and 6 women - those men were all very used to working with women.

But when I wasn't working, I was usually at a window looking down at Earth.

Some astronauts sleep in sort of beds - compartments that you can open up and crawl into and then close up, almost like a little bedroom.

I didn't really decide that I wanted to be an astronaut for sure until the end of college.

The most anxious time was during launch, just because that is so dramatic.

Well, we spend an awful lot of our time working and doing experiments. It's very busy up on the shuttle.

The food isn't too bad. It's very different from the food that the astronauts ate in the very early days of the space program.

So I saw many planets, and they looked just a little bit brighter than they do from Earth.

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

Once you are assigned to a flight, the whole crew is assigned at the same time, and then that crew trains together for a whole year to prepare for that flight.

So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight.

I find myself looking around for other new, interesting opportunities to dive into.

I don't have any nicknames.

One thing I probably share with everyone else in the astronaut office is composure.

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

But even in elementary school and junior high, I was very interested in space and in the space program.

It takes a few years to prepare for a space mission.

So I decided on science when I was in college.