Sally Ride

Even though NASA tries to simulate launch, and we practice in simulators, it's not the same - it's not even close to the same.

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

I haven't written my memoirs or let the television movie be made about my life.

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

I think eventually private enterprise will be able to send people into orbit, but I suspect initially it's going to have to be with NASA's help.

It's well known that many girls have a tendency to dumb down when they're in middle school.

On both of my flights, everything went very well.

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.

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.

For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds.

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

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