Sally Ride Quotes

"Some astronauts sleep in sort of beds - compartments that you can open up and crawl into and then close up, almost like a little bedroom."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Beds, Open, Sleep)

"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."
- Sally Ride
(Related: First, Wrong)

"So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Years)

"So I saw many planets, and they looked just a little bit brighter than they do from Earth."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Earth)

"So I decided on science when I was in college."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Science, College)

"On both of my flights, everything went very well."
- Sally Ride

"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."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Food, Space)

"Well, we spend an awful lot of our time working and doing experiments. It's very busy up on the shuttle."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Time)

"Once you are assigned to a flight, the whole crew is assigned at the same time, and then that crew trains together for a whole year to prepare for that flight."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Time)

"The most anxious time was during launch, just because that is so dramatic."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Time)

"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."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Loss, Pressure, Wrong)

"The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Accident, Space)

"The stars don't look bigger, but they do look brighter."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Stars)

"The view of Earth is spectacular."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Earth)

"On a standard space shuttle crew, two of the astronauts have a test pilot background - the commander and the pilot."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Space)

"We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see hurricanes form."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Cities, Day, Night, Ocean, Rivers)

"It takes a few years to prepare for a space mission."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Mission, Space, Years)

"When you're getting ready to launch into space, you're sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Space, Waiting)

"Yes, I did feel a special responsibility to be the first American woman in space."
- Sally Ride
(Related: American, First, Responsibility, Space, Woman)

"Then during the mission itself, I used the space shuttle's robot arm to release a satellite into orbit."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Mission, Space)

"For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Women, Time)

"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
(Related: Time, Accident, Safety, Space, Wrong)

"All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary."
- Sally Ride

"Because I was a tennis player, Billie Jean King was a hero of mine."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Tennis)

"But even in elementary school and junior high, I was very interested in space and in the space program."
- Sally Ride
(Related: School, Space)

"But when I wasn't working, I was usually at a window looking down at Earth."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Earth)

"My background is in physics, so I was the mission specialist, who is sort of like the flight engineer on an airplane."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Mission, Physics)

"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."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Practice)

"No, I think most astronauts recognize that the space shuttle program is very high-risk, and are prepared for accidents."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Accidents, Space)

"I didn't really decide that I wanted to be an astronaut for sure until the end of college."
- Sally Ride
(Related: College, End)

"I do a lot of running and hiking, and I also collect stamps - space stamps and Olympics stamps."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Running, Space)

"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!"
- Sally Ride
(Related: Sleep)

"Different astronauts sleep in different ways."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Sleep)

"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."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Clothes, Space)

"I don't have any nicknames."
- Sally Ride

"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."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Knowledge, Mission, Training, Years)

"I was always very interested in science, and I knew that for me, science was a better long-term career than tennis."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Science, Career, Tennis)

"I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Space)

"I liked math - that was my favorite subject - and I was very interested in astronomy and in physical science."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Science, Astronomy, Favorite)

"I had both male and female heroes."
- Sally Ride
(Related: Heroes)

"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."
- Sally Ride
(Related: People, Job)