Sometimes people ask me how difficult the astronaut program was, but being in Sierra Leone, being responsible for the health of more than 200 people, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, at age 26 - that prepared me to take on a lot of different challenges.
There is a fascination with the idea that one has 'seen someone else do something' before one can achieve it. Maybe that's true in some cases, but clearly it is not a requirement. I knew what I wanted to do.
I think that people need an adrenalin rush. Folks need something aspirational; they need to do something that is hard. That's what ignites the imagination.
We put water down into the earth to push up gas, then we say, 'Ooh, we're having a water crisis.' This is foolishness, and this kind of foolishness, where we try to excuse human behavior, is dangerous.
Kids come out of the chute liking science. They ask, 'How come? Why? What's this?' They pick up stuff to examine it. We might not call that science, but it's discovering the world around us.
The best way to get students involved in science and want to follow either science careers or incorporate it in their lives or to achieve science literacy is to expose them to the various jobs in STEM. It's broad from biologists to electricians to nanotechnologists to building fusion engines. It's a wide range of things.
I stayed in the astronaut program until 1993. People ask me why I left. I thought I had a lot of things to contribute that would be difficult to do if I stayed. I thought I could have a stronger voice as an advocate for space exploration. So I ended up starting my own technology consulting company.
The really wonderful thing that happened to me when I was in space was this feeling of belonging to the entire universe.
When I was a little girl, I thought when I had an opportunity to go into space, I thought I would at a minimum be working on Mars or another large planet because we were doing all of these incredible things.
Seeing a full display of humanity involved in space is a game-changer for everyone. We've all looked at the stars; we've all imagined what was going on. Not everyone wants to go, but everyone wants to know what it's like.
When you have teachers saying, 'I don't have enough time for hands-on activities,' we need to rethink the way we do education.
I always knew I'd go to space.
For me, it was really a childhood dream coming true. It's sort of where the fantasy led reality, and then I got to be on the Starship Enterprise anyway. And the cool thing was - is I was the only person on this bridge who had actually been in space.
We have to change the way people look at scientists. Today, they are the nerds, the geeks. Instead, we want some of the cool kids to say, 'Hey, this is all right.'
To survive as a species on this planet, we're going to have to see ourselves as Earthlings.
I'd love to go into space again if there were a mission to Mars. I'd also love to go to a completely different planetary system, out of our solar system.
The reality is that we know that this universe, that our galaxy, has billions of stars. We know that stars have planets. So the likelihood that there is life somewhere else to me is just absolutely there.
Intuitive versus analytical? That's a foolish choice. It's foolish, just like trying to choose between being realistic or idealistic. You need both in life.
A big part of engaging kids in science is not getting the single, correct answer; it's being willing to work with students to discover the correct answer.
People like space. But they sometimes have been left out. People are much more open to that if you invite them in.
