Source: Talk Is Jericho — Captain Eileen Collins: The First Woman To Command The Space Shuttle
Duration: 1h 4m
UAP/UFO sightings
I don't know any astronauts who have seen anything in space, but I do watch the news on pilots, military pilots see these weird things in the atmosphere. I have a theory that no one has really mentioned yet. I think that what they are seeing is a form of energy.
I really don't think any other country has that type of technology. And I certainly don't think aliens are visiting Earth, walking among us. Makes for a kind of cool story.
Pilot training mistakes
I flew a T-38 into a thunderstorm when I was only like 23 years old... I ended up in a hailstorm and that I could have died in that hailstorm because we were getting the airplanes getting pounded with hail and we were getting thrown up and down.
Columbia disaster
What caused the Columbia accident was a piece of foam came off this orange tank and it came down and hit the wing, put a hole in the wing, and the crew didn't know about the hole in the wing.
Return to flight mission
I really believe as the commander of the next flight, if I had quit because I thought, hey, I'm just not in for going up there and taking that kind of risk... that would have sent a very bad signal to the entire space industry.
Space shuttle malfunctions
On my third flight... we had a hydrogen leak all the way to orbit, and we ended up running out of gas. Our main engine shut down because our low-level sensor sensed that we were completely out of hydrogen fuel.
Women in military aviation
I was in the first class of women to go through pilot training. The Air Force was doing a test program because they needed to see how do women fly? Can women fly in this very high stress environment of military flying? And the answer was yes.
Risk management and training
I developed a four-step process of dealing with mistakes. Number one, you admit it to whoever needs to know. Number two, you fix it. Number three, you do something to prevent from happening again. And number four, you move on.
US-Russia space cooperation
We were the first Americans to see the Russian space station Mir... This is back in the days when Bill Clinton was president and he was the one that wanted the Russians to come together in space.
Gender bias in the Air Force
The resistance kind of came from middle management. People that were maybe five years older than us, seven, eight years older, they were more resistant to having the women.
Space Woman documentary
I initially did not want to do the documentary. I had to get permission from my family because, you know, they can get kind of personal, especially if you want to add some drama.
