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Quotes by Astronaut
"The first plane ride was in a homemade glider my buddy and I built. Unfortunately we didn't get more than four feet off the ground, because it crashed."
"Of course I was delighted the flight was over, but I still had to worry about cleaning up inside the cabin, I had to worry about the hatch, how to get in the sling, and so on."
"I woke up an hour before I was supposed to, and started going over the mental checklist: where do I go from here, what do I do? I don't remember eating anything at all, just going through the physical, getting into the suit. We practiced that so much, it was all rote."
"We wanted to be in great shape, we wanted to be able to cope with zero gravity, we wanted to be able to cope with accelerations and decelerations and so on. So all of us trained so that we were probably in the best physical condition we had ever been in up until that point."
"Later, in the early teens, I used to ride my bike every Saturday morning to the nearest airport, ten miles away, push airplanes in and out of the hangars, and clean up the hangars."
"I'd like to say I was smart enough to finish six grades in five years, but I think perhaps the teacher was just glad to get rid of me."
"The excitement really didn't start to build until the trailer - which was carrying me, with a space suit with ventilation and all that sort of stuff - pulled up to the launch pad."
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"When a man looks across a street, sees a pretty girl, and waves at her, that's not a rendezvous, that's a passing acquaintance. When he walks across the street and nibbles on her ear, that's a rendezvous!"
"Some of the wives didn't keep up with the program. It started breaking apart during the Apollo days."
"Another real problem was over putting our helmets on for re-entry, because we all had severe head colds. They couldn't come up there and make us. Houston, you have a problem!"
"So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight."
"Yes, I did feel a special responsibility to be the first American woman in space."
"Then during the mission itself, I used the space shuttle's robot arm to release a satellite into orbit."
"Because I was a tennis player, Billie Jean King was a hero of mine."
"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."
"Researchers can measure what kind of angles your legs take up during the day when they're just trailing around behind you in weightless conditions, and what kind of impacts you feel during your exercise. They're going to compare that with what we do on the ground."
"Polytechnique is a school whose multidisciplinary, very high scientific level curriculum is invaluable."
"The last thing, and the only one that you cannot physically train for, is the psychological preparation."
"It's, I mean, for me, it's the same as training with my crewmembers. We share the same first part of the flight. We all go together. It's the most critical part of the flight, the ascent."
"We also had to bring with us some desired scientific equipment over to the station as well as assemble new machines. For that, I had to conduct two space walks."
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"And, you run also video because to fly this arm, you're relying mostly on some external camera views that may be coming from the arm itself or from the station."
"And everything stopped quite rapidly because I knew that nobody in Europe was able to go to space. It was the privilege of being either American or Russian."
"The Theory of Groups is a branch of mathematics in which one does something to something and then compares the result with the result obtained from doing the same thing to something else, or something else to the same thing."
"The infinite in mathematics is alway unruly unless it is properly treated."
"It is hard to know what you are talking about in mathematics, yet no one questions the validity of what you say. There is no other realm of discourse half so queer."
"My name was on the list very early after these announcements were made through the newspapers in Europe."
"I feel very privileged to be part of this mission, and when my nomination was announced, I was really very, very happy to be selected for this mission."
"I had done everything I could do as an astronaut, and we have a long line of inexperienced astronauts waiting for their first missions, and so my role really should be to step aside and help them prepare for their missions, rather than to try to get another mission."
"I think for being not unsympathetic that their appearance may also appear, so differently it, must; similarly as with animals, which meet us in very different forms, which look somehow harmonious however all. On exactly such forms I would stand."
"At least believe this many humans, who are interested obviously in this topic. Many of them visited me after lectures and meetings, in hope that I can give concrete answers to their questions. For it was clear: If that does not know it, who is to then know it?"
"I felt fine after 24 hours and asked the state commission to prolong my stay in space to three days. And I carried out the entire schedule. Could I have done that if I had been half-dead?"
"I am convinced that the modular structure of the Mir will be the main trend in manned orbital stations development in the next century."
"Once you've been in space, you appreciate how small and fragile the Earth is."
"Russia is still the leader in world space exploration. But its position of leader involves great responsibility - we have no right to lag behind. We can and we must move constantly forward."
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