Sally Ride

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.