Valentina Tereshkova Quotes

On a beautiful clear Sunday morning, myself and James Nesbitt jumped out of a plane together at 18,000 feet.

Testing a parachute drop of a heavy object is not simple.

You have seen on TV how hard it is to go up 129,000 feet and how hard it is to come down.

And I don't want to jump out of an airplane - I've done that.

When you freefall for 7,000 feet it doesn't feel like you're falling: it feels like you're floating, a bit like scuba diving.

My sky diving experience was spectacular, to say the least. The number of safety measures and repeated cross checks make it safer. The team did not let us jump alone, as individuals are not expected to have the expertise to do so safely on their own.

You know, west Texas is already beautiful to view from the ground. I can't even imagine what it must look like as you're floating down to Earth in a capsule making its return trip from outer space.

You know, I had a couple hundred jumps in my career, and I made most of them, but the ones they show over and over are the ones when I crashed.

When you're in a spacecraft, you need to know what things you can touch and what things you shouldn't touch!

I've always been interested in the idea of space exploration. When I was younger it was just a dream, but the theory of rockets being able to travel through space was very much alive. I found it very exciting.

So one thing that I want to do is to make people realize that astronauts in general are very normal people. They are down to Earth, so to speak. I know it sounds contradictive, but we are very normal people. We are very normal people with a fantastic privilege and opportunity to do something that is extraordinary.

We go up just into space - space is most commonly accepted to be 100 kilometres above the earth's surface, and we go up just beyond that to about 350,000 ft.

Anybody can leap off a building.

Especially when I first really started to work with Kenneth and Franklin, who had been in space already. And so, they were able to talk about space and tell me a few things about how things would really happen.

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Astronauts are like these mythic legends, but really, they are just regular people, people who wear chinos.

For Virgin Galactic's customers, it is transportation to the most amazing experience of their lives. I very much look forward to sending some Scots into space.

Skydiving - I love to do that.

I was a pilot and flying hang gliders, paragliders, aerobatics airplanes, and then I discovered skydiving. Free fall. Free. With nothing around you, just a parachute on your back. And you go down. But you don't feel like you're going down. Total freedom.

I can remember walking on the moon.

BASE jumping is skydiving from fixed objects, like buildings, antennae, bridges and earth - meaning mountains, cliffs. It's for sure - for me - it's the ultimate feeling of being in free fall, with all the visual references.

The first time I jumped from a plane, I screamed like a woman. I was two miles up and you could hear me clear as day. Now I love it.

The only time I had what you would call life-threatening fear was when I was on the Moon. Towards the end of our stay, we got excited and we were going to do the high jump, and I jumped and fell over backwards. That was a scary time, because if the backpack got broken, I would have had it. But everything held together.

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.

It's hard not to be excited when you're going to find a way to land on the moon.