Sally Ride Quotes - Page 2

You can picture pretty easily if there were a paying passenger aboard a rocket that failed, like Challenger failed. Certainly it would be a tragedy, and a tragedy for the company. They would have a hard time recovering from it.

I did not come to NASA to make history.

Everywhere I go I meet girls and boys who want to be astronauts and explore space, or they love the ocean and want to be oceanographers, or they love animals and want to be zoologists, or they love designing things and want to be engineers. I want to see those same stars in their eyes in 10 years and know they are on their way!

I love the John Glenn model... I may call NASA in 25 years or so, and see if they'd like to send me to Mars.

Studying whether there's life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there's something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. That's something that is almost part of being human, and I'm certain that will continue.

It's too bad our society isn't further along.

The most important steps that I followed were studying math and science in school. I was always interested in physics and astronomy and chemistry and I continued to study those subjects through high school and college on into graduate school. That's what prepared me for being an astronaut; it actually gave me the qualifications to be selected to be an astronaut.

Anything from making a mistake on an experiment that would ruin some scientist on earth's experiment - career, potentially - to doing something wrong with the satellite that a country was depending on for its communications, to making some mistake that could actually cost you and the crew either a mission or your lives. So there is a lot of pressure that's put on every astronaut to just make sure that he or she understands exactly what to do, exactly when to do it, and is trained and prepared to carry it out.

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

Suppose you came across a woman lying on the street with an elephant sitting on her chest. You notice she is short of breath. Shortness of breath can be a symptom of heart problems. In her case, the much more likely cause is the elephant on her chest. For a long time, society put obstacles in the way of women who wanted to enter the sciences. That is the elephant. Until the playing field has veen leveled and lingering stereotypes are gone, you can't even ask the question.

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

The view of earth is spectacular from space. Most people imagine that when astronauts look out the window of the shuttle they see the whole earth like that big blue marble that was made famous by the flights that went to the moon. But the shuttle is much, much closer than those astronauts were. So we don't see the whole planet, the whole ball at once, we just see parts of it.

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.

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

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

I felt very honored, and I knew that people would be watching very closely, and I felt it was very, very important that I do a good job.

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

For a long time, society put obstacles in the way of women who wanted to enter the sciences.

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

On both of my flights, everything went very well.

The fact that I was going to be the first American woman to go into space carried huge expectations along with it.

I think maybe it's too bad that our society isn't further along and this is such a big deal. I think it's time...that people realize that women in this country can do any job they want to do.

If they asked me if I wanted to go into space tomorrow, I'd do it in a heartbeat. On the other hand, if they asked me if I wanted to go into training for three years and then go into space again, I'd probably say no.

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

So most astronauts getting ready to lift off are excited and very anxious and worried about that explosion - because if something goes wrong in the first seconds of launch, there's not very much you can do.