Quotes from Sally Ride

All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.

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

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.

So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight.

On both of my flights, everything went very well.

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

When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.

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

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.

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

The experience of being in space didn't change my perspective of myself or of the planet or of life. I had no spiritual experience.

I've discovered that half the people would love to go into space and there's no need to explain it to them. The other half can't understand and I couldn't explain it to them. If someone doesn't know why, I can't explain it.

For whatever reason, I didn't succumb to the stereotype that science wasn't for girls. I got encouragement from my parents. I never ran into a teacher or a counselor who told me that science was for boys. A lot of my friends did.

So I decided on science when I was in college.

I was always very interested in science, and I knew that for me, science was a better long-term career than tennis.

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

The experience of being in space didn't change my perspective of myself or of the planet or of life. I had no spiritual experience.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I did not come to NASA to make history.

The stars don't look bigger, but they do look brighter.