Sally Ride Quotes

I thought I was prepared for space, and it still absolutely defied every expectation and dream. It is an incredible thing to put yourself on a rocket and launch off the planet. It is an amazing thing to see the planet from space. This blue sphere is almost indescribably beautiful.

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

The real pleasure was having the chance to enjoy being weightless, and the other was to spend some time looking out at this beautiful Earth that we're all lucky to inhabit.

They say that in space, nobody can hear you scream. The first time I stepped out of the airlock, I was ready to scream - not because I was scared but because I was so excited to see the Earth below me.

The thing I remember most about space is the view from the spacewalk. When I was inside the space shuttle and looking through the window, you can see the earth and the stars, and it's very beautiful, but it's like looking at an aquarium, sort of. When you go outside and spacewalk, you become a scuba diver.

I still dream about being on the space station with the feeling of being weightless. The weightlessness is the most amazing, relaxing and natural feeling.

Now, I've never flown in space; but the folks who have say that on landing day, you know, you've just spent maybe a week and a half, sometimes two weeks in orbit and you're used to the things happening slowly in space.

The first time I went into space was just so much more than you could imagine or prepare yourself for.

I'm looking forward to getting to space, looking back to earth out the copula window. I think all of it is going to be a completely new experience that I can't quite predict.

The ride to orbit was impressive, as it always is. But once I got on board the space station, it really felt like I was visiting an old home; it felt very comfortable.

After being once in space, I was keen to go back there. But it didn't happen.

I cannot wait to get up there and experience space travel for the first time. It will be a dream come true.

In 2009 I went up on the space shuttle. I was in space for 16 days and docked at the space station for 11 days. The entire crew did five space walks, of which I was involved with three of them. When you're doing a space walk, you always have a buddy with you. It's a very dangerous environment when you're doing a space walk.

I could have gone on flying through space forever.

Being outside during the space walk, the view of the Earth is just spectacular, and getting a chance to do that is just unbelievable, everything about it. You are going around the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour, so you have 45 minutes of sunlight followed by 45 minutes of darkness. You do a lap every 90 minutes.

The view from space is really very special. From the window, you can look back at the Earth and see the stars around you. I just hope that more people from Britain get the chance to experience it.

It's a brilliant surface in that sunlight. The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on earth. It's an interesting place to be. I recommend it.

NASA was going to pick a public school teacher to go into space, observe and make a journal about the space flight, and I am a teacher who always dreamed of going up into space.

Anyone who has spent any time in space will love it for the rest of their lives. I achieved my childhood dream of the sky.

A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward space travel.

That's really why I want to go to space - I want to be weightless for so long that it gets boring.

I've flown in space four times now, so it's going to be hard in that respect, but I certainly look forward to going back to Earth. I've been up here for a really long time and sometimes, when I think about it, I feel like I've lived my whole life up here.

When you go to vacuum in the airlock and you take the hose off the front of your space suit, there's a little bit of water in there, and you can see that sublimate and ice crystals form and fly away. My thought at that moment was, 'Oh, we are not kidding at vacuum here; we are really in space.'

On the second flight, we were doing a lot of science experiments, and we've got a really cool window called the cupola. It's a big, circular window with six panes around, sort of at angles so you can see the Earth, you can see the edge of the Earth, you can go out - look out into the universe. It's pretty spectacular.

After floating for nine and a half months in space, gravity is not your friend.