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.
I wanted to be a professional dancer for a period of time, and I did a lot of dancing and choreography and got paid for it.
The difference between science and the arts is not that they are different sides of the same coin even, or even different parts of the same continuum, but rather, they are manifestations of the same thing. The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity.
My perspective is the Earth will be here. It just may not be habitable to our life form. We get confused. We think we're the center of everything.
When I was growing up as a little girl and as a teenager, I loved designing and making dogs' clothes and wanting to be a fashion designer. I took art and ceramics. I loved dance.
When I left NASA, I was looking at how you could use space technologies for developing countries' work.
I've gotten this advice at different times, and it distills down to one word: purpose. Why are you here? When you start to get distracted by thoughts such as 'Do I fit in? Does this person like me?' - remember why you're there and what you want to accomplish.
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.
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.
The drills we do, where you're telling kids to memorize things, don't actually work. What works is engaging them and letting them do things and discover things.
We look at science as something very elite, which only a few people can learn. That's just not true. You just have to start early and give kids a foundation. Kids live up, or down, to expectations.
Sometimes parents squash students' interests because they are afraid of science or math. So they don't participate. You don't have to know the answers to engage kids; you just have to let them know it's important.
I want to make sure that that future that we're creating is one that is the best it can be for people around the world, and also one that includes the full range of our talent and our skills - and, you know, gender and ethnicity, geography - to solving the world's problems.
I wanted to be a scientist, but I wanted to go into space. They are not mutually exclusive.
Some people say they feel very small when they think about space. I felt more expansive, very connected to the universe.
The reality is the majority of us will not get off this planet. So the long run is, some kind of space exploration has to benefit us here on Earth.
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.
What we find is that if you have a goal that is very, very far out, and you approach it in little steps, you start to get there faster. Your mind opens up to the possibilities.
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.
In fourth grade, I was interested in all areas of science. I particularly loved learning about how the earth was created.
