I'm honored to be the first woman to have the opportunity to command the shuttle. I don't really think about that on a day-to-day basis because I really don't need to.

We want to explore. We're curious people. Look back over history, people have put their lives at stake to go out and explore ... We believe in what we're doing. Now it's time to go.

The vast majority of the shuttle program was a success. We learned so much about how a reusable spacecraft interacts with its environment, how it ages-and what to design next time.

I don't think of myself as being a woman and having anything to prove.

Some people said, “we don't want to risk astronauts lives anymore, we need to stop doing this”. The astronauts don't feel that wayWe fly for our country, we fly for humanity, we fly for exploration, we fly for a variety of reasons, and we don't stop flying because we have accidents.

I have no nerves, no emotion, no pressure.

Because of [Amelia Earhart], we had more women available to fly in the 1940's to help us get through World War II. And because of these women, women of my generation are able to look back and say, 'Hey, they did it. They even flew military airplanes, we can do it, too.'