Sally Ride Quotes (47 Quotes)


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

    Different astronauts sleep in different ways.


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

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


    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.

    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.

    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!

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

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

    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.

    I didn't really decide that I wanted to be an astronaut for sure until the end of college.

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

    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.

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

    Women make up only 25 percent of the science, engineering and technology workforce... We are delighted to be working with NASA Ames to give Silicon Valley area girls a chance to explore and develop their potential in science at an age when many begin to drift away from their natural interest.

    My parents didn't have a scientific bone in their body, and their daughter was pursuing a career in astrophysics. They didn't even know what astrophysics meant, but they supported me,

    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.

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

    I do a lot of running and hiking, and I also collect stamps - space stamps and Olympics stamps.

    Today, the astronaut corps is almost 25 female, ... and I want that to continue to rise.

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

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

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

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

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

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


    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.

    If girls are interested, they have the potential to go further, ... There are still lingering stereotypes that affect girls in middle school, and they lose interest in the subjects.

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

    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 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.

    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.

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

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

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

    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.


    On both of my flights, everything went very well.

    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.

    So I decided on science when I was in college.

    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.

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

    We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see hurricanes form.

    For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds.

    All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.


    More Sally Ride Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Space - Science - Time - Accident - Education - Woman - Tennis - Heroism - College - Astronomy & Cosmology - Man - Food - Work & Career - Daughters - Body - Safety - Physics - Night - Chance - View All Sally Ride Quotations

    Related Authors


    Yuri Gagarin - Pete Conrad - Neil Armstrong - John Glenn - James Irwin - Gordon Cooper - Christa McAuliffe - Buzz Aldrin - Alan Shepard - Alan Bean


Authors (by First Name)

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M
N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z

Other Inspiring Sections