Version User Scope of changes
Nov 19 2007, 5:28 PM EST (current) LC41 1 photo added, 1 photo deleted
Nov 8 2007, 3:53 PM EST svenny

Changes

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Sally RideSally Ride
  • "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."
  • "All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary."
  • "Because I was a tennis player, Billie Jean King was a hero of mine."
  • "But even in elementary school and junior high, I was very interested in space and in the space program."
  • "But when I wasn't working, I was usually at a window looking down at Earth."
  • "Different astronauts sleep in different ways."
  • "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."
  • "For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds."
  • "I didn't really decide that I wanted to be an astronaut for sure until the end of college."
  • "I do a lot of running and hiking, and I also collect stamps - space stamps and Olympics stamps."
  • "I don't have any nicknames."
  • "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."
  • "I had both male and female heroes."
  • "I liked math - that was my favorite subject - and I was very interested in astronomy and in physical science."
  • "I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle."
  • "I was always very interested in science, and I knew that for me, science was a better long-term career than tennis."
  • "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."
  • "It takes a few years to prepare for a space mission."
  • "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!"
  • "My background is in physics, so I was the mission specialist, who is sort of like the flight engineer on an airplane."
  • "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."
  • "No, I think most astronauts recognize that the space shuttle program is very high-risk, and are prepared for accidents."
  • "On a standard space shuttle crew, two of the astronauts have a test pilot background - the commander and the pilot."
  • "On both of my flights, everything went very well."
  • "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 I decided on science when I was in college."
  • "So I saw many planets, and they looked just a little bit brighter than they do from Earth."
  • "So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "The most anxious time was during launch, just because that is so dramatic."
  • "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."
  • "The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident."
  • "The stars don't look bigger, but they do look brighter."
  • "The view of Earth is spectacular."
  • "Then during the mission itself, I used the space shuttle's robot arm to release a satellite into orbit."
  • "We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see hurricanes form."
  • "Well, we spend an awful lot of our time working and doing experiments. It's very busy up on the shuttle."
  • "When you're getting ready to launch into space, you're sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen."
  • "Yes, I did feel a special responsibility to be the first American woman in space."