![]() ![]() “It's important to have people who look like you succeeding. I could say, 'I look like her,'" Gunderson said. Gunderson said Ride had "changed the world and I wanted to change the world in the way that she had." In elementary school, dressed in a snowmobiling suit with glued-on NASA and American flag patches fashioned into a makeshift astronaut jumpsuit, Gunderson stood in front of her classmates and proclaimed that she wanted to be an astronaut just like Sally Ride. "She was breaking barriers and making it more possible for me," Collins said.Īnother woman who found lifelong inspiration in Ride is National Test Pilot School Flight Test Engineer Kate Gunderson. The six women accounted for just 17% of the 35 newly selected astronaut candidates.įuture astronaut Eileen Collins was a pilot in the Air Force at the time with her sights set on space. She followed Ride’s selection and the attention she received from the media. She was selected by NASA as part of the agency’s eighth astronaut class, the first to assign astronauts to fly aboard the space shuttle and the first to include female candidates. "She was eating breakfast one day in the student cafeteria, and she saw the Stanford Daily, the student newspaper, had an article about NASA recruiting women and women scientists for the very first time," O'Shaughnessy said. ![]() Until Ride was selected in 1978 alongside five other women, all of NASA’s astronaut candidates had been white men that were test pilots or scientists, often with military experience. “Many people think that she was like a type A personality, mapped out her whole life, and that couldn't be further from the truth,” O’Shaughnessy said. Pursuing a career as an astronaut never crossed her mind. And when she got interested in something, she really dove in and gave it her all," said Tam O’Shaughnessy, Ride’s longtime business and life partner. She thought she might end up as a physics professor after earning her Ph.D. In 1977, before becoming an astronaut, Ride was a doctoral student studying physics at Stanford University in California. While going to space is what thrust Ride into the spotlight, it was her advocacy for improving the safety of human spaceflight and her effort to make high-quality scientific education available to more young people that cemented her legacy. Now on the 40th anniversary of her first historic spaceflight and 11 years after her death from pancreatic cancer, NASA is preparing to launch the first mission to the moon with a woman onboard. Sally Ride shattered the glass ceiling on June 18, 1983, in dramatic fashion aboard NASA’s space shuttle Challenger to become the first American woman in space. Hickam is one of more than two dozen people named to the newly-created National Space Council Users Advisory Group.MELBOURNE, Fla. I have also talked to the folks that had to do with her internship and made absolutely certain that there will be no black mark on her record.” After talking to her, I am certain she deserves a position in the aerospace industry and I’m doing all I can to secure her one that will be better than she lost. She reached out to me with an unnecessary apology which I heartily accepted and returned with my own. This I had nothing to do with nor could I since I do not hire and fire at the agency or have any say on employment whatsoever.Īs it turned out, it was due to the NASA hashtag her friends used that called the agency’s attention to it long after my comments were gone. Later, I learned she had lost her offer for an internship with NASA. Soon, her friends took umbrage and said a lot of unkind things but long after I was gone as I immediately deleted my comments and blocked all concerned. However, when I saw NASA and the word used together, it occurred to me that this young person might get in trouble if NASA saw it so I tweeted to her one word: “Language” and intended to leave it at that. “I’m a Vietnam vet and not at all offended by the F-word. Hickam added that he had a kind word with Naomi and has promised to get her a better position. The NASA employee later wrote about the incident on his blog, saying he had nothing to do with her getting fired. She eventually reached out and apologised to Hickam. Hickam tweeted her saying, “And I am on the National Space Council that oversees NASA.”Īs a consequence of twitter quarrel, Naomi lost her internship offer. Unaware of Homer Hickam’s profile, Naomi ended up under a pool of embarrassment when Hickam answered back, telling Naomi that she was talking to a senior NASA official. ![]()
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