“Over the many years since my flight, it became clear to me there are a lot of kids, including girls, who are curious about science, about the world, about life on Mars, about how to design a roller coaster. But they lose that, partly because our system doesn't put a lot of emphasis on science and math.

It's not cool to be a scientist or engineer. These kids want to do things that are cool—like be a pro basketball player, an actor, a singer, a playwright. Things that out culture puts in front of them in papers and on TV all the time. When they're relatively young, they think science is cool and interesting, but they lose that in socializing. That was the motivation for Sally Ride Science.”