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.

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

If anything happened, I think my husband would have to deal with that as the time came.

I have the LIFE magazine of the men walking on the moon.

Sometimes when things get kind of frantic, it helps to call my husband Steve, because I think he's got a real good sense of where everything's gonna be in a few years.

Every shuttle mission's been successful.

I can remember in early elementary school when the Russians launched the first satellite. There was still so much unknown about space. People thought Mars was probably populated.