Mae Jemison

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.

People like space. But they sometimes have been left out. People are much more open to that if you invite them in.

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.

Some people say they feel very small when they think about space. I felt more expansive, very connected to the universe.

I always knew I'd go to space.

Science provides an understanding of a universal experience. Arts provide a universal understanding of a personal experience.

I believe the biggest impediment we have right now with going to Mars is public commitment. More people need to see themselves as a part of space travel; we need to see more inclusiveness.

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.

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 think science fiction helps us think about possibilities, to speculate - it helps us look at our society from a different perspective. It lets us look at our mores, using science as the backdrop, as the game changer.

I was a science fiction geek. That lets you know that they come in all sizes and styles, right?

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.