Valentina Tereshkova

There was a lake beneath me, but the big, heavy parachute which had to be opened two miles above the ground couldn't be steered. My first thought was, 'Lord, they send just one woman into space, and she has to end up in the water.'

One of the most widely read novels by a black American is Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man.' It is his masterwork - it won the National Book Award in 1953 and catapulted my man to the highest levels of literary esteem.

In the Soyuz, the little Russian capsule, you can actually hear the banging of the big shield, the big heat shield on the bottom, as it slowly erodes away from the heat and pieces of it fly off like sparks across your window, and it's an interesting thing to ride through, you know.