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.

Sally Ride

All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.

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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.

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

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

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The view of Earth is spectacular.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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I did not come to NASA to make history.

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

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

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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.

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

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So I saw many planets, and they looked just a little bit brighter than they do from Earth.

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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.

Sally Ride

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!

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

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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.

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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.

Sally Ride

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.

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