As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?
I wanted to explore, like the scientists, aquanauts and astronauts I read about in books and magazines and saw on television. I was fascinated by how things worked, starting with my earliest toys.
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Explain your career in one easy paragraph.
I’ve worked in several fields, from oceanography to meteorology and science to engineering, and in universities, civilian and military government agencies, non-profits and corporations. I’ve explored from the deep sea to outer space, worked with amazing machinery to help improve our understanding of this beautiful planet and learned how to bring people together to solve big challenges.
Did you have to overcome any particular challenges to get where you are today?
When I started out, women in geology field camps or aboard research ships were still considered unwelcome oddities, though this was breaking down. I was lucky to have a couple of professors early on who saw my potential and buoyed my confidence. I had to develop my own way of handling scepticism and sometimes outright opposition: with professionalism, technical performance, humour and a stubborn refusal to accept someone else’s worry as my problem to solve.
What’s the most exciting thing you’ve done in your career?
Flying in space. Nothing else comes close.
What achievement are you most proud of?
The work I did with a small band of engineers to devise tools and methods to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble is now nearing its 30th anniversary in orbit and is a vastly better instrument than when we deployed it back in 1990.
“Passion and purpose are better compass needles for life than job titles”
Your book is called Handprints on Hubble. Why?
The astronauts who used the tools we developed for Hubble left visible handprints on the telescope’s outer skin as they moved during their spacewalks. Our work was so indispensable to those spacewalks that you could say we left metaphorical handprints.
If you could send a message back to yourself as a kid, what would you say?
Passion and purpose are better compass needles for life than job titles. Know yourself, build on your strengths and work to shore up your weaknesses. People will throw their opinions at you, but nobody gets to tell you what your interests are.
If you could have a long conversation with any scientist, living or dead, who would it be?
Leonardo da Vinci. He painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, made substantial scientific discoveries and conceived of many things – helicopters, parachutes, adding machines – long before they were feasible. I’d love to get even a glimpse of how his mind worked.
What scientific development do you hope to see in your lifetime?
Astronaut bootprints on Mars and positive confirmation of earlier life there.
Do you have an unexpected hobby, and if so, please will you tell us about it?
I love to roam around the skies in a two-seater Super Decathlon airplane.
What’s the best thing you’ve read or seen in the past 12 months?
Handprints on Hubble, of course! I also loved James Donovan’s Shoot for the Moon about the Apollo missions and The Perfectionists, a history of precision engineering by Simon Winchester.
How useful will your skills be after the apocalypse?
Dealing with the unexpected, figuring out how things work and coming up with solutions that don’t yet exist is exactly what scientists and engineers do for a living. Sure, they will be useful.
OK, one last thing: tell us something that will blow our minds…
I often dream in zero G.
Kathryn Sullivan flew on three space shuttle missions and in 1984 became the first US woman to walk in space. She later headed the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Her new book is Handprints on Hubble: An astronaut’s story of invention (MIT Press)
