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.

- Sally Ride

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

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

- Sally Ride

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

- 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.

- Sally Ride

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

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

- Sally Ride

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

- Sally Ride

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

- Sally Ride

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

- Sally Ride

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

- Sally Ride

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.

- Sally Ride

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

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.

- Sally Ride

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

- Sally Ride

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

- Sally Ride

All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.

- Sally Ride

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!

- Sally Ride

The view of Earth is spectacular.

- Sally Ride

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.

- Sally Ride