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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.

-Sally Ride

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Anything From Making A

Sally Ride

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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.

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I Would Like To Be Remembered As Someone Who Was Not Afraid To Do What She Wanted To Do, And As Someone Who Took Risks Along The Way In Order To Achieve Her Goals.

The Rockets Light! The Shuttle Leaps Off The Launch Pad In A Cloud Of Steam And A Trail Of Fire.

So I Decided On Science When I Was In College.

Well, We Spend An Awful Lot Of Our Time Working And Doing Experiments. It's Very Busy Up On The Shuttle.

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.

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.

I Slept Just Floating In The Middle Of The Flight Deck, The Upper Deck Of The Space Shuttle.

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.

We Can See Cities During The Day And At Night, And We Can Watch Rivers Dump Sediment Into The Ocean, And See Hurricanes Form.

It's Well Known That Many Girls Have A Tendency To Dumb Down When They're In Middle School.

We Need To Make Science Cool Again.

I Have A Lot Of Common Sense. I Know What Needs To Be Done And How To Approach It. I Have An Ability To Work With People On Large Enterprises.

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.

For A Long Time, Society Put Obstacles In The Way Of Women Who Wanted To Enter The Sciences.

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.

All Adventures, Especially Into New Territory, Are Scary.

The Space Shuttle Is A Better And Safer Rocket Than It Was Before The Challenger Accident.

I Can't Remember A Single Time [my Parents] Ever Told Me Not To Do Something I Wanted To Do.

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.

I Liked Math - That Was My Favorite Subject - And I Was Very Interested In Astronomy And In Physical Science.

Favorite Subject

One Thing I Probably Share With Everyone Else In The Astronaut Office Is Composure.

So Most Astronauts Are Astronauts For A Couple Of Years Before They Are Assigned To A Flight.

It Was Hard To Become An Astronaut. Not Anywhere Near As Much Physical Training As People Imagine, But A Lot Of Mental Training, A Lot Of Learning. You Have To Learn Everything There Is To Know About The Space Shuttle And Everything You Are Going To Be Doing, And Everything You Need To Know If Something Goes Wrong, And Then Once You Have Learned It All, You Have To Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice Until Everything Is Second Nature, So It's A Very, Very Difficult Training, And It Takes Years.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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That's Something That Is Almost Part Of Being Human And I'm Certain That Will Continue.

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Ever Been To Disneyland? That Was Definitely An E Ticket!

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The Most Anxious Time Was During Launch, Just Because That Is So Dramatic.

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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.

I Was Always Very Interested In Science, And I Knew That For Me, Science Was A Better Long-term Career Than Tennis.

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