Sally Ride

We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see hurricanes form.

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

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

On both of my flights, everything went very well.

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

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

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.

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.

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.

You know, I go around the country a lot.

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.

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