 But even in elementary school and junior high, I was very interested in space and in the space program. |
| 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 most anxious time was during launch, just because that is so dramatic. |
| We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see hurricanes form. |
| 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. |
| I didn't really decide that I wanted to be an astronaut for sure until the end of college. |
| All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary. |
| On both of my flights, everything went very well. |
| Some astronauts sleep in sort of beds - compartments that you can open up and crawl into and then close up, almost like a little bedroom. |
| So I decided on science when I was in college. |
| Different astronauts sleep in different ways. |
| Once you are assigned to a flight, the whole crew is assigned at the same time, and then that crew trains together for a whole year to prepare for that flight. |
| 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. |
| It takes a few years to prepare for a space mission. |
| No, I think most astronauts recognize that the space shuttle program is very high-risk, and are prepared for accidents. |
| When you're getting ready to launch into space, you're sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen. |
| 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. |
| I felt very honored, and I knew that people would be watching very closely, and I felt it was very, very important that I do a good job. |
| I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle. |
| For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds. |
