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 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.

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.

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.

It's not the Olympics. It's Concord, New Hampshire, and a homecoming should reflect the community I'm part of.

If anything, the overriding emotion is gonna just be excitement.

My sympathies have always been for working-class people.