Sally Ride

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

“All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.”

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

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

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

“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...”

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

“My parents must have done a great job. Anytime I wanted to pursue something that they weren't familiar with, that was not part of their lifestyle, they let me go ahead and do it.”

“NASA has to approve whatever we wear, so there are clothes to choose from, like space shorts - we wear those a lot - and NASA T-shirts.”

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

“There are aspects of being the first woman in space that I'm not going to enjoy.”

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

“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.”

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

“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 emergen...”

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

“Different astronauts sleep in different ways.”

“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.”