The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident.

I think there's a certain space people have decided I occupy - the funny-sidekick thing.

When you take away the phone and e-mail and you don't have a million things to run around to, it allows your mind the space to think more expansively about the things that matter.

Yes, I did feel a special responsibility to be the first American woman in space.

There are aspects of being the first woman in space that I'm not going to enjoy.

One thing I probably share with everyone else in the astronaut office is composure.

There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program - your tax-dollar will go further.

No, I think most astronauts recognize that the space shuttle program is very high-risk, and are prepared for accidents.

I think what's important is to give space to the range of human experience.

But even in elementary school and junior high, I was very interested in space and in the space program.

Astronauts are very professional and when they're preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives.

That's what we want to do here at Johnson Space Center. I think what we have always brought to NASA and brought to the country is trying to push the boundaries, trying to go to the next level.

Space travel for everyone is the next frontier in the human experience.

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 c...

One in 200 stars has habitable Earth-like planets surrounding it - in the galaxy, half a billion stars have Earth-like planets going around them - that's huge, half a billion. So when we look at the n...

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are...

Wooden was the coach for the UCLA Bruins, arguably the greatest sports coach we ever had.

'Course the world of sports takes itself way too serious. Sports writers are all high and mighty.

I thought I would be a sports announcer. All I was was a curious kid who wanted to be on the radio.

I used a lot of sports psychologists when I was younger... sometimes it helped, sometimes it didn't.