Sally Ride

There are aspects of being the first woman in space that I'm not going to enjoy.

— Sally Ride

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

— Sally Ride

It takes a couple of years just to get the background and knowledge that you need before you can go into detailed…

— Sally Ride

Three Secrets to Success: Be willing to learn new things. Be able to assimilate new information quickly. Be able to get along…

— Sally Ride

The best advice I can give anybody is to try to understand who you are and what you want to do, and…

— Sally Ride

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

— Sally Ride

The astronauts who came in with me in my astronaut class - my class had 29 men and 6 women - those…

— Sally Ride

When you can feel that close to something you're used to seeing from this great distance, well, it changes a person.

— Sally Ride

I have a lot of common sense. I know what needs to be done and how to approach it. I have an…

— Sally Ride

The food isn't too bad. It's very different from the food that the astronauts ate in the very early days of the…

— Sally Ride

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

— Sally Ride

After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the…

— Sally Ride

The pressure suit helps if something goes wrong during launch or re-entry - astronauts have a way to parachute off the shuttle.…

— Sally Ride

It's easy to sleep floating around - it's very comfortable. But you have to be careful that you don't float into somebody…

— Sally Ride

I love the John Glenn model... I may call NASA in 25 years or so, and see if they'd like to send…

— Sally Ride

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

— Sally Ride

My parents must have done a great job. Anytime I wanted to pursue something that they weren't familiar with, that was not…

— Sally Ride

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

— Sally Ride

The thing I'll remember most about the flight is that it was fun. In fact, I'm sure it was the most fun…

— Sally Ride

Even though NASA tries to simulate launch, and we practice in simulators, it's not the same - it's not even close to…

— Sally Ride