I can remember in early elementary school when the Russians launched the first satellite. There was still so much unknown about space. People thought Mars was probably populated.

I have the LIFE magazine of the men walking on the moon.

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.

I told them how excited I would be to go into space and how thrilled I was when Alan Shepard made his historic flight, and when John Kennedy announced on the news that the men...

I really don’t want to say goodbye to any of you people.

The Twilight Zone’ wasn’t around with the kids. They think going up in space is neat. Within their lifetime, there will be paying passengers on the shuttle.

I was a little concerned with how the crew was going to view me because I didn’t know whether this program had been kinda forced down their throats. But they were wonderful.

I touch the future. I teach. That’s going with me.

This is a kind of a personal message from me, and that is that teachers are good communicators, they do an important job in our society.

My job in space will be to observe and write a journal. I am also going to be teaching a class for students on earth about life in space and on the space shuttle and...

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.

We haven’t sat down with Scott and Caroline and said, Now you realize that there’s X amount of pounds of thrust. And this can happen and that can happen.

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 have a one-hour program called the Mission Watch, where I will describe details of the mission and give additional information about the lessons from space.

When I’m 60, maybe, I’ll look at my pile of papers and wonder, What really happened that year?

We sat around one night and thought that people are going to look back and say, I can’t imagine there was a lot of excitement about HER going up!

If anything happened, I think my husband would have to deal with that as the time came.

Space is going to be commonplace.

Sometimes when things get kind of frantic, it helps to call [my husband] because I think he’s got a real good sense of where everything’s gonna be in a few years. He’ll say, ‘Christa, just...

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

I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to...

If I can get some student interested in science, if I can show members of the general public what’s going on up there in the space program, then my job’s been done.

Reach for it. Push yourself as far as you can.

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

I touch the future. I teach. I really appreciate that sentiment. That’s going with me.

I touch the future. I teach.

My sympathies have always been for working-class people.

I don’t think any teacher is as ready as I am,

Every shuttle mission’s been successful.

Reach for the stars.