Sally Ride

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

Science is fun. Science is curiosity. We all have natural curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It's posing questions and coming up with a method. It's delving in.

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

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

So I decided on science when I was in college.

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

For whatever reason, I didn't succumb to the stereotype that science wasn't for girls. I got encouragement from my parents. I never ran into a teacher or a counselor who told me that science was for boys. A lot of my friends did.

It takes a couple of years just to get the background and knowledge that you need before you can go into detailed training for your mission.

I did not come to NASA to make history.

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.

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.