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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

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Once You Are Assigned

Sally Ride

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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.

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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.

So I Decided On Science When I Was In College.

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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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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.

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.

No, I Think Most Astronauts Recognize That The Space Shuttle Program Is Very High-risk, And Are Prepared For Accidents.

Everywhere I Go I Meet Girls And Boys Who Want To Be Astronauts And Explore Space, Or They Love The Ocean And Want To Be Oceanographers, Or They Love Animals And Want To Be Zoologists, Or They Love Designing Things And Want To Be Engineers. I Want To See Those Same Stars In Their Eyes In 10 Years And Know They Are On Their Way!

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.

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.

On Both Of My Flights, Everything Went Very Well.

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

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

All Adventures, Especially Into New Territory, Are Scary.

But When I Wasn't Working, I Was Usually At A Window Looking Down At Earth.

I Have Been A Bit Of A Risk-taker All My Life.

There's A Huge Amount Of Pressure On Every Astronaut, Because When You Get Right Down To It, The Experiments That Are Conducted On A Space Flight, Or The Satellites That Are Carried Up, The Work That's To Be Done, Is Important And Expensive Work, And You Are Up There For A Week Or Two On A Space Shuttle Flight. The Country Has Invested A Lot Of Money In You And Your Training, And The Space Shuttle And Everything That's In It, And You Have To Do Things Correctly. You Can't Make A Mistake During That Week Or Two That You're In Space.

If We Want Scientists And Engineers In The Future, We Should Be Cultivating The Girls As Much As The Boys.

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.

It's No Secret That I've Been Reluctant To Use My Name For Things.

The Most Important Steps That I Followed Were Studying Math And Science In School. I Was Always Interested In Physics And Astronomy And Chemistry And I Continued To Study Those Subjects Through High School And College On Into Graduate School. That's What Prepared Me For Being An Astronaut; It Actually Gave Me The Qualifications To Be Selected To Be An Astronaut.

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

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.

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

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Our Future Lies With Today's Kids And Tomorrow's Space Exploration.

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.

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

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

Favorite Subject

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

Different Astronauts Sleep In Different Ways.

The Fact That I Was Going To Be The First American Woman To Go Into Space Carried Huge Expectations Along With It.

My Background Is In Physics, So I Was The Mission Specialist, Who Is Sort Of Like The Flight Engineer On An Airplane.

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.

It's Too Bad Our Society Isn't Further Along.

You Know, I Go Around The Country A Lot.

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.

I Haven't Written My Memoirs Or Let The Television Movie Be Made About My Life.

But Even In Elementary School And Junior High, I Was Very Interested In Space And In The Space Program.

I Didn't Really Decide That I Wanted To Be An Astronaut For Sure Until The End Of College.

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

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Then During The Mission Itself, I Used The Space Shuttle's Robot Arm To Release A Satellite Into Orbit.

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

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

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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.

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.

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.

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When You're Getting Ready To Launch Into Space, You're Sitting On A Big Explosion Waiting To Happen.

I Did Not Come To Nasa To Make History.

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

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

I Never Went Into Physics Or The Astronaut Corps To Become A Role Model. But After My First Flight, It Became Clear To Me That I Was One. And I Began To Understand The Importance Of That To People. Young Girls Need To See Role Models In Whatever Careers They May Choose, Just So They Can Picture Themselves Doing Those Jobs Someday. You Can't Be What You Can't See.

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Rocket Science Is Tough, And Rockets Have A Way Of Failing.

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.

For Quite Some Time, Women At Nasa Only Had Scientific Backgrounds.

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On A Standard Space Shuttle Crew, Two Of The Astronauts Have A Test Pilot Background - The Commander And The Pilot.

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