Sally Ride Quotes

It was a real honor for me to get to be the first woman astronaut. I think it's really important that young girls that are growing up today can see that women can be astronauts too. There have actually been a lot of women, who are astronauts, that that's a career that's open to them.

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

We need to make science cool again.

I love the John Glenn model ... I may call NASA in 25 years or so, and see if they'd like to send me to Mars.

Anything from making a mistake on an experiment that would ruin some scientist on earth's experiment - career, potentially - to doing something wrong with the satellite that a country was depending on for its communications, to making some mistake that could actually cost you and the crew either a mission or your lives. So there is a lot of pressure that's put on every astronaut to just make sure that he or she understands exactly what to do, exactly when to do it, and is trained and prepared to carry it out.

On both of my flights, everything went very well.

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 think maybe it's too bad that our society isn't further along and this is such a big deal. I think it's time ... that people realize that women in this country can do any job they want to do.

So I decided on science when I was in college.

I never went into physics or the astronaut corps to become a role model. But after my first flight, it became clear to me that I was one. And I began to understand the importance of that to people. Young girls need to see role models in whatever careers they may choose, just so they can picture themselves doing those jobs someday. You can't be what you can't see.

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

No, I think most astronauts recognize that the space shuttle program is very high-risk, and are prepared for accidents.

Q: Dr. Ride, apart from the obvious differences, how do you assess the differences in men and women astronauts?
A: Aside from the obvious differences, I don't think there are any.
- Prime crew press conference, April 29, 1982

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.

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 did not come to NASA to make history.

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

If they asked me if I wanted to go into space tomorrow, I'd do it in a heartbeat. On the other hand, if they asked me if I wanted to go into training for three years and then go into space again, I'd probably say no.

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

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.

Everywhere I go I meet girls and boys who want to be astronauts and explore space, or they love the ocean and want to be oceanographers, or they love animals and want to be zoologists, or they love designing things and want to be engineers. I want to see those same stars in their eyes in 10 years and know they are on their way!

Because I was a tennis player, Billie Jean King was a hero of mine.

Yes, I did feel a special responsibility to be the first American woman in space.

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

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

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

Our future lies with today's kids and tomorrow's space exploration.

It's too bad our society isn't further along.

Suppose you came across a woman lying on the street with an elephant sitting on her chest. You notice she is short of breath. Shortness of breath can be a symptom of heart problems. In her case, the much more likely cause is the elephant on her chest. For a long time, society put obstacles in the way of women who wanted to enter the sciences. That is the elephant. Until the playing field has veen leveled and lingering stereotypes are gone, you can't even ask the question.

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. Whether it's going to be a consortium or one entity remains to be seen. I could be wrong. I could be one of the old fogies! Rocket science is tough, and rockets have a way of failing. It happens. A company has to be willing to bear the risk of its rocket failing. It's a very large capital investment.

You know, I go around the country a lot.

The most important steps that I followed were studying math and science in school. I was always interested in physics and astronomy and chemistry and I continued to study those subjects through high school and college on into graduate school. That's what prepared me for being an astronaut; it actually gave me the qualifications to be selected to be an astronaut.

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

There are lots of opportunities out there for women to work in these fields, ... Girls just need support, encouragement and mentoring to follow through with the sciences.

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

I find myself looking around for other new, interesting opportunities to dive into.

I don't have any nicknames.

Astronauts will remain the explorers, the pioneers-the first to go back to moon and on to Mars. But I think it's really important to make space space available to as many people as we can. It's going to be a while before we can launch people for less than $20 million a ticket. But that day is coming.

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

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

I had both male and female heroes.

You can picture pretty easily if there were a paying passenger aboard a rocket that failed, like Challenger failed. Certainly it would be a tragedy, and a tragedy for the company. They would have a hard time recovering from it.

Ever been to Disneyland? That was definitely an E ticket!

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

When you can feel that close to something you're used to seeing from this great distance, well, it changes a person.

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

Three Secrets to Success: Be willing to learn new things. Be able to assimilate new information quickly. Be able to get along with and work with other people.

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.

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

There's a huge amount of pressure on every astronaut, because when you get right down to it, the experiments that are conducted on a space flight, or the satellites that are carried up, the work that's to be done, is important and expensive work, and you are up there for a week or two on a Space Shuttle flight. The country has invested a lot of money in you and your training, and the Space Shuttle and everything that's in it, and you have to do things correctly. You can't make a mistake during that week or two that you're in space.

If we want scientists and engineers in the future, we should be cultivating the girls as much as the boys.

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

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.

The view of earth is spectacular from space. Most people imagine that when astronauts look out the window of the shuttle they see the whole earth like that big blue marble that was made famous by the flights that went to the moon. But the shuttle is much, much closer than those astronauts were. So we don't see the whole planet, the whole ball at once, we just see parts of it.

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.

All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.

Studying whether there's life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there's something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. That's something that is almost part of being human, and I'm certain that will continue.