The president felt that it was important to send an ordinary citizen to experience the excitement of space travel as a representative for all Americans.

Space is for everybody. It's not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That's our new frontier out there, and it's everybody's business to know about space.

Just as the pioneer travelers of the Conestoga wagon days kept personal journals, I, as a pioneer space traveler, would do the same.

NASA was going to pick a public school teacher to go into space, observe and make a journal about the space flight, and I am a teacher who always dreamed of going up into space.

I will have a one-hour program called the Mission Watch, where I will describe details of the mission and give additional information about the lessons from space.

I will go around the space shuttle and give a guided tour of the major areas and describe what is done in each area. This will be called The Ultimate Field Trip.

Every shuttle mission's been successful.