Top 35 Sally Ride Quotes

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

I think eventually private enterprise will be able to send people into orbit, but I suspect initially it’s going to have to be with NASA’s help.

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

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

You know, I go around the country a lot.

For a long time, society put obstacles in the way of women who wanted to enter the sciences.

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

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!

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

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

I don’t have any nicknames.

The view of Earth is spectacular.

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

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

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

Different astronauts sleep in different ways.

The experience of being in space didn’t change my perspective of myself or of the planet or of life. I had no spiritual experience.

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

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

I’ve discovered that half the people would love to go into space and there’s no need to explain it to them. The other half can’t understand and I couldn’t explain it to them. If someone doesn’t know why, I can’t explain it.

Rocket science is tough, and rockets have a way of failing.

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

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

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

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

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.

I haven’t written my memoirs or let the television movie be made about my life.

It’s well known that many girls have a tendency to dumb down when they’re in middle school.

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.

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!

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

All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.

So I decided on science when I was in college.

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.