Sally Ride Quotes

The excitement really didn't start to build until the trailer - which was carrying me, with a space suit with ventilation and all that sort of stuff - pulled up to the launch pad.

I've completed half of my space training at Space City in Moscow. I love adventure, and I've been training in a centrifuge and MiG Fighter with a view to going into space and being a spokesman for space exploration!

As an astronaut, you have a very defined set of tasks to do. Those tasks may require you to work 60, 70 or 80 hours a week.

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.

I've always been a bit of a space geek. I wrote an article years ago about the neutral buoyancy tank, which is this biblically sized pool where they train astronauts. And it was just the coolest thing.

Astronauts are very professional and when they're preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives.

NASA wanted to assure its ability to examine the spacecraft in orbit for signs of damage.

As an astronaut, especially during launch, half of the risk of a six-month flight is in the first nine minutes.

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

Historically, the U.S.'s big launchers fly seldom enough that their costs are dominated by annual upkeep of facilities and staff, not by the actual cost of each launch. The expensive part is maintaining the launch capability, not actually conducting launches.

As I'm sure you may know, I'm planning to become a spaceflight participant and have been recently approved to begin my spaceflight training by the Russian space federation having passed the necessary medical and physical tests.

Our shuttle crew is four people, because we're going to transfer a crew up to station, so all the jobs are divided between four people rather than five or six people. So it's been busy.

The best simulator for spacewalking is underwater - it allows full visuals and body movement in 3D. Virtual reality is good, too, and has some advantages, like full Station simulation, not just part. Like all simulators, they have parts that are wrong and misleading: an important thing to remember when preparing for reality.

I lived at Star City for more than a year ahead of my trip to Mir on May 18, 1991 in Soyuz TM-12. My life at Star City was so remote that learning Russian became my greatest priority.

Once you get into space, you can really unleash a lot of creativity, but the launch itself? I have been through all of the creative ways, and believe me, chemical rockets are the best.

There is no way I would ask others to go on a Virgin Galactic flight if I didn't feel it was safe enough for myself.

I was with Tom Wolfe at the launch of Apollo 17, which led him to 'The Right Stuff.'

One of the things that I'm very excited about with New Shepard, which is our suborbital tourism vehicle, is using that to get a lot of practice. One of the equilibria that we're at today with space launch is that we don't get to practice enough.

A few months after NASA was formed, I was asked if I knew anyone who would like to set up a program in space astronomy.

I was working as a flight director on the Gemini IX mission, and it seemed almost overnight I was picking up the responsibilities for the Apollo Program.

I remember riding the Space Needle and going up in the elevator and being scared, but thinking, 'This is going to be like going up a launch tower,' and so I would sit there and try to face that fear.

I had thought training for Mercury was rigorous. Once we got caught up in the Gemini training program, our Mercury training looked pretty soft.

There's one downside in comparison to both Soyuz and SpaceX, is that when you go to those places - when I went to Russia, or when I went to California - you're sort of focused on what you're doing. Your family's not there. Your lawn isn't needing to be cut. You're just focusing on what you need to do.

Technologically, it is not hard to launch an object into space. Emotionally, it has been difficult.

When I started working with NASA in 1989 as part of a mission to send spacecraft to Pluto, I knew it would take at least 10-15 years to see results of my efforts.