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

Sally Ride

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Sally Ride
Age: 61 †
Born: 1951
Born: May 26
Died: 2012
Died: July 23
Astronaut
Astrophysicist
Physicist
University Teacher
Writer
LA
California
Dr Sally Kristen Ride
Sally Ride- Hawley
Sally Kristen Ride
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More quotes by Sally Ride

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I had both male and female heroes.
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There are lots of opportunities out there for women to work in these fields, ... Girls just need support, encouragement and mentoring to follow through with the sciences.
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The pressure suit helps if something goes wrong during launch or re-entry - astronauts have a way to parachute off the shuttle. The suits protect you from loss of pressure in case of emergency.
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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.
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The fact that I was going to be the first American woman to go into space carried huge expectations along with it.
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Even though NASA tries to simulate launch, and we practice in simulators, it's not the same - it's not even close to the same.
Sally Ride
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The rockets light! The shuttle leaps off the launch pad in a cloud of steam and a trail of fire.
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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.
Sally Ride
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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.
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I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.
Sally Ride
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For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds.
Sally Ride
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So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight.
Sally Ride
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The best advice I can give anybody is to try to understand who you are and what you want to do, and don't be afraid to go down that road and do whatever it takes and work as hard as you have to work to achieve that.
Sally Ride
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It was a real honor for me to get to be the first woman astronaut. I think it's really important that young girls that are growing up today can see that women can be astronauts too. There have actually been a lot of women, who are astronauts, that that's a career that's open to them.
Sally Ride
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Ever been to Disneyland? That was definitely an E ticket!
Sally Ride
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On a standard space shuttle crew, two of the astronauts have a test pilot background - the commander and the pilot.
Sally Ride
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I can't remember a single time [my parents] ever told me not to do something I wanted to do.
Sally Ride
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Rocket science is tough, and rockets have a way of failing.
Sally Ride
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But when I wasn't working, I was usually at a window looking down at Earth.
Sally Ride
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That's something that is almost part of being human and I'm certain that will continue.
Sally Ride