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as sally ride If she was ready to make history as the first American woman in space, it would have been a moment of celebration for science.
But a reporter asked a question instead, leaving Ride and his crew stunned.
“As a member of this group, when you were training and something went wrong, when something went wrong, how did you respond?” he asked. “How did you take it as a human being? Do you cry? What is your occupation?”
Mr. Ride diplomatically deflected, pointing out that one of the male crew members had never been asked that question.
The exchange at a press conference just weeks before NASA launched Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983 is described by author Loren Grasch in her new book.The Six: The untold story of America’s first female astronauts”
Glash said she, like many Americans, grew up knowing Ride’s name and her historic accomplishments. But journalists began to wonder about the other women who trained with Ride in NASA’s first coed astronaut class. These women, all formidable and accomplished in their respective fields, were competing for the chance to board the same historic shuttle flight.
Glash’s book, released Tuesday, describes Ride’s selection for the groundbreaking voyage, what happened during her maiden flight, the pressures she faced on the job, and more as the U.S. space agency’s first woman in space. It is the starting point for a deeper story about the aviator. The barrage of sexist questions they received along the way.
“I’m trying to tell their stories … the way they should have been told at the time,” said Glash, a print reporter for Bloomberg.
She recently spoke to CNN about the book and why the stories it explores still resonate decades later.
In the early 1970s, a damning report – cited in Glash’s book – charged: Lack of diversity in NASA ranks.
“There are three women sent into space by NASA,” the report states. “They are Arabella and Anita, both of whom are spiders. The other is Miss Baker, who is a monkey.”
The report’s co-author, Ruth Bates Harris, was fired from the agency for her “disruptiveness” but was rehired after political backlash, Groush wrote. Thanks to a massive recruiting effort, it took nearly a decade for NASA to complete a longer list of names (all human) before it began joining the ranks of women sent into space.
“We had a civil rights movement. We had a feminist movement. That was something NASA could no longer ignore,” Glash said.
From 1976 to 1977, more than 1,500 women volunteered to become astronauts, Glash wrote.
Ultimately, the group was narrowed down to six.
Provided by: Simon & Schuster
“The Six: The untold story of America’s first female astronauts” by Lauren Glash will be released on September 12th.
“The Six” became part of NASA Astronaut Group 8, selected from 35 candidates. In 1978, he was asked to begin training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. And it wasn’t just women who made history. Astronaut class in training It was also the first NASA organization to include people of color: three African Americans and one Asian American.
Ride was an astrophysicist. Other women in the class were electrical engineer Judy Resnik, geologist and oceanographer Kathy Sullivan, biochemist Shannon Lucid, and physicians Anna Fisher and Leah Seddon.
They had something remarkable in common. Although Resnik, Lucid, and Seddon had some flying experience, none of them had been trained to fly jets. A new role has been added to the Space Shuttle program: the “mission specialist,” which does not require flight experience. “NASA was able to open up the standards to people like scientists and doctors. …So that more people from different backgrounds could participate in the program, not just women and people of color. ,” Glash said.
NASA
Seddon, Fisher, Resnik, Shannon Lucid (fourth from left), Ride and Sullivan stand side by side at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on January 31, 1978.
A reporter’s question to Ride in 1983 about crying during training was consistent with comments from many journalists at the time, a perspective also reflected in Sixx’s descriptions in print and broadcast reports. .
“When introducing the women on television, the anchor read each woman’s name one by one, then read each woman’s marital status, emphasizing those who were single,” Grusch wrote. “In various articles they were referred to as ‘girls’ or ‘space women,’ and dedicated writers made sure to include their ages, heights, and weights in their descriptions.”
In a television interview cited in the book, NBC’s Tom Brokaw asked Resnick, “Do you think there will ever be a time when there will be romance in space?”
As part of his investigation, Glash said he not only read the transcript of the press conference, but also obtained the footage through a Freedom of Information Act request.
“Watching the videos is even worse than listening to or reading the recordings, because they’re answering these stupid questions, like whether you cried in the simulator or whether you wanted to be the first mother in space. Because you get to see Sally’s face,” Grush said. “The media really summed up the sentiment at the time and the pressures (The Six) were under.”
NASA
Astronauts Ride and Fisher participate in a mission sequence test at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in May 1983.
While a committee selected the astronaut classes, space shuttle assignments fell primarily to one man. George Abbey was NASA’s Director of Flight Operations at the time.
Abby was convinced that Ride was the right person for the mission to send the first American woman into space. However, the space center director, who ultimately had to give the go-ahead for the choice, initially disagreed.
So, to prove her point, Abby met with key figures, including Bob Crippen, the man chosen to command the historic seventh space shuttle flight, Glash wrote.
Crippen and Abbey said that in addition to Ride’s many skills, his ability to work under pressure and get along well with others on the crew, the astrophysicist has “counterintuitive and appealing” traits. That’s what I felt, Grusch wrote.
“Introverted Sally was nothing like this.” demand Spotlight or fame. And they both agreed that such a personality might be best suited to being The One,” Glash wrote. “They didn’t want to pick someone who wanted too much attention.”
In the end, Abby created a spreadsheet comparing the women and marked each skill with an X. Ryde topped his rivals with another X on the grid, “showing he understood a lot of the systems better than the other top two,” Glash said. In addition to that, her robotic arm skills will be essential to the mission. “The deal is now sealed,” Grusch wrote.
NASA
Sullivan and Ride flew into space together on the Space Shuttle Challenger in October 1984. This voyage was Ride’s second space trip. Sullivan became the first American woman to perform a spacewalk, and she made history with this trip.
The ride was first, but eventually all members of The Six flew on the space shuttle. Glash chronicles their journey in his book. 1986 Challenger disaster Reznik died during the space shuttle’s second flight.
While Six’s story will always be important, Groush says there are important lessons to be learned today from what Ride and his friends went through.
“NASA is currently considering returning to the moon with a spacecraft. artemis program. And one of the stated goals of that plan is to send the first woman to the moon. So this is a timely reminder of what women have had to deal with and how they have been tragically excluded from programs for years. I think so,” Glash said. “Hopefully, when we return to the moon with our women, our first thought is that they will be much more comfortable than the first women in the ’70s and ’80s.”