Suppose you came across a woman lying on the street with an elephant sitting on her chest. You notice she is short of breath. Shortness of breath can be a symptom of heart problems. In her case, the much more likely cause is the elephant on her chest. For a long time, society put obstacles in the way of women who wanted to enter the sciences. That is the elephant. Until the playing field has veen leveled and lingering stereotypes are gone, you can't even ask the question.

NASA has to approve whatever we wear, so there are clothes to choose from, like space shorts - we wear those a lot - and NASA T-shirts.

I think eventually private enterprise will be able to send people into orbit, but I suspect initially it's going to have to be with NASA's help.

So I saw many planets, and they looked just a little bit brighter than they do from Earth.

Well, we spend an awful lot of our time working and doing experiments. It's very busy up on the shuttle.

I felt very honored, and I knew that people would be watching very closely, and I felt it was very, very important that I do a good job.

On both of my flights, everything went very well.