The president felt that it was important to send an ordinary citizen to experience the excitement of space travel as a representative for all Americans.

I touch the future. I teach.

If I can get some student interested in science, if I can show members of the general public what's going on up there in the space program, then my job's been done.

NASA was going to pick a public school teacher to go into space, observe and make a journal about the space flight, and I am a teacher who always dreamed of going up into space.

The president felt that it was important to send an ordinary citizen to experience the excitement of space travel as a representative for all Americans.