Sally Ride

"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."

"I think it's important for little girls growing up, and young women, to have one in every walk of life. So from that point of view, I'm proud to be a role model!"

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

"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."

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

"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."

"One thing I probably share with everyone else in the astronaut office is composure."

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

"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."

"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."

"The fact that I was going to be the first American woman to go into space carried huge expectations along with it."

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

"The view of Earth is spectacular."

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

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