In October 1984, Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to walk in space as a payload commander aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. She earned a private pilot certificate in the 1970s when she signed on with NASA. But her father began the process when she was a teenager by teaching her to be a “built-in autopilot” on family trips in a Cessna 182.
A FLYING CHILDHOOD... My learning curves were all sorted out and sanded out with my dad during my teenage years, building my own sight picture, judging flare height. By the time I got around to grabbing an instructor in Houston, he found me completely boring.
ON HER SUPER DECATHLON... One of the wonderful ironies of my life is that as far as the FAA is concerned, I am probably a 500-hour pilot. If you look at my NASA record, I have 1,500 hours of jet time [in the T-38] and 500-some-odd hours in space.
GLIDER FLYING... Doing that decently, that’s artistic, elegant flying.”
walking in space... You are by necessity very, very focused; those timelines are very carefully choreographed and packed tightly. Our commander was [Robert L.] Crippen, who was a two-flight veteran. He wanted to be sure that we did register that this was not another training run in the tank—look around, there’s no SCUBA divers, look at that great blue thing—that’s the Earth. He slowed us up now and then and made sure we took a moment.
LESSONS FROM THE COCKPIT... There are a lot of lessons that flying can give you a good handle on that play back and forth between other parts of professional life. There is this thing called ‘situational awareness.’ It’s not only an obviously critically important skill and attribute of any successful flight and any good pilot. That has a lot of carry-over to the everyday world.
ADVICE FOR STUDENTS... Don’t ever get too proud about how good your airmanship and communications and situational awareness is. Always stay hungry and humble.”
