Eileen collins Quotes

I have no nerves , no emotion , no pressure.

I wanted to apply to the astronaut program after the Challenger accident.

For those of us who have flown before , that was by far the smoothest ascent .

We reflect on the last shuttle mission , the great ship Columbia and her inspiring crew.

Personally , I did not expect any large pieces of foam to fall off the external tank.

It's just been a wild ride. We've finally been able to put the icing on the cake with this mission.

Roger, we've been thinking about Edwards today.

I wish I could come back up here whenever I wanted.

For many of us it's been four years since we trained for (this mission) and its been a wonderful experience.

We have had a fantastic mission. We are so glad to come back and be able to say it's a success.

We brought Discovery back in great shape. The crew was very anxious to walk around and see what the outside looks like and it looks fantastic.

She was praying for us -- everybody was praying for us. That's another reason I knew we were safe.

This is really a chance for us to share what we did on the flight.

He was pretty educated about what we do in a general sense.

I was quite nervous about whether I could throw out the ball and hit it spot on. He didn't even have to move to catch it. I was quite happy.

We're [also] taking up a lot of tools and equipment in the mid-deck.

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.

I think about the Columbia crew every day. I feel like we are carrying on their mission.

Had we listened a little bit more and paid attention to the hardware that was talking to us, we probably could have prevented the accident. We need to learn from the mistakes we made ... I am continually reminding myself that we're in a dangerous business.

This mission is a dream come true for all of us, not just to fly on the shuttle but to fly on this very important mission.

Whether your commander is a man or woman doesn't really matter when it comes to getting your mission done.

Houston, we have a good deploy. Chandra is ready to open the eyes of X-ray astronomy to the world.

My dream, now, is that people will discover and invent new ways to fly higher, faster and farther and that someday humans will travel beyond our solar system.

It will be expensive, it will be risky and we will make mistakes as we go. But we will do it because we are explorers by nature.

In some ways I feel sad about leaving NASA, but the reality is, I won't fly again.