A Quote by Leroy Chiao
Even though I knew I was inside the space shuttle getting ready to go fly, something about it wasn't completely real up until we got the call at about one minute to go, to close and lock our visors and start our oxygen flow. People often ask me, "What did it feel like right at the moment of launch?" And they're surprised when I tell them actually what I felt was relief. It wasn't like being anxious or scared or anything. It was relief because this is something I had wanted to do my whole life and now that the boosters had lit, we were on our way to go do it and nothing was going to stop us.
Quote Topics
About
Actually
Anxious
Anything
Ask
Ask Me
Because
Being
Call
Close
Did
Even
Feel
Felt
Flow
Fly
Getting
Go
Going
Got
Had
Inside
Knew
Launch
Life
Like
Lit
Lock
Me
Minute
Moment
Nothing
Now
Often
One Minute
Our
Oxygen
People
Ready
Real
Relief
Right
Scared
Shuttle
Something
Space
Space Shuttle
Start
Stop
Surprised
Tell
Them
Though
Until
Up
Us
Wanted
Way
Were
Whole
Whole Life
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We have to remember that we're no longer competing for anything anymore. We're not competing for life and death. Now we need to go back to when we would raise our children together and be able to have that strong unit of community, which is our strength. So women together, as a tribe, to me, are the strongest force. But we were put in a position to have to compete with each other, and that's got to stop. We've got to know that whenever that creeps up in our head, that that's not our true nature. That was something that was embedded in us, and that needs to start to go away.
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Their leaving made me melancholy, though I also felt something like relief when they disappeared into the dark trees. I hadn't needed to get anything from my pack; I'd only wanted to be alone. Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.
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