Sally ride

The women's movement had already paved the way, I think, for my coming.

NASA has to approve whatever we wear, so there are clothes to choose from, like space shorts - we wear those a lot - and NASA T-shirts.

Different astronauts sleep in different ways.

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.

My parents must have done a great job. Anytime I wanted to pursue something that they weren't familiar with, that was not part of their lifestyle, they let me go ahead and do it.

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.

The astronauts who came in with me in my astronaut class - my class had 29 men and 6 women - those men were all very used to working with women.

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.

So I saw many planets, and they looked just a little bit brighter than they do from Earth.

So I decided on science when I was in college.