About Sally Ride

Before becoming known as the first female American astronaut to travel in space, Sally Ride, born on May 26, 1951, was fortunate to have open-minded parents who allowed Sally and her younger sister, Karen (“Bear”) to explore both their inner and outer worlds without the typical gender restrictions of the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to her wide variety of reading interests, Sally Ride also enjoyed playing sports and memorizing baseball statistics (especially those of her favorite local team, the L.A. Dodgers). Believing a girl should be anything she wanted to be, Sally Ride dreamed of being a quarterback for the UCLA Bruins or a shortstop for the Dodgers.

Sally Ride's Childhood Years

When Sally was nine and Karen was seven, their father, Dale took a year off from teaching and took his wife and the girls with him to Europe. The Ride family lived in and traveled to countries such as the former Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and England. When the Ride family arrived back to the United States the following year, the girls returned to school. Since Sally tested and received scores ahead of her age group, she was advanced to the sixth grade.

Although Sally enjoyed and excelled at playing sports with the neighborhood boys, her father was concerned for her physical safety. He introduced her to tennis of which she enjoyed and had a talent. Seeing her exceptional talent, her father sent her to a famous tennis teacher/coach, Alice Marble to further develop her tennis skills. Sally soon became so good at playing and winning at tennis that she was invited to play in tennis tournaments throughout Southern California.

Sally Ride Develops Love of Science

In addition to cultivating her tennis skills, Sally fell in love with science, especially astronomy, after having watched the astronaut John Glenn’s rocket blast into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida and orbit the Earth. Her parents, after much pleading from Sally, provided her with a telescope, a chemistry set, and a subscription to Scientific American magazine.

College Years

By the time Sally was applying to college, she declared science as her major, but also planned to continue playing tennis in college. However, since Title IX was four years away from becoming a law allowing girls to earn sports scholarships, her parents had to pay her tuition to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania where she ultimately majored in physics and was successful in tennis.

After three semesters, Sally Ride decided to leave college to play professional tennis, therefore returning to the west coast. However, soon after realizing her mistake, Sally applied and was admitted to Stanford University where she continued to major in physics and play tennis briefly until her studies became a larger priority ultimately earning her both a Bachelor of Science in Physics and a Bachelor of Arts in English.

Since her passion for physics was strong, Sally applied to Stanford University’s graduate school and focused on Astrophysics where she earned her Master’s Degree in 1975. While working on her Ph.D. in 1977, Sally discovered an advertisement in the Stanford Daily Newspaper stating that NASA was accepting applications for astronauts (young scientists to serve as mission specialists to oversee experiments on flights of new reusable shuttle fleet). Without hesitation, Sally responded to the ad and applied to the program.

Sally Ride's Years at NASA

The NASA application process required recommendations from scientific colleagues. As part of her application to the space program, Sally and other candidates went through physical and psychiatric tests to determine their fitness for space travel and missions. She received her acceptance letter early in 1978 to train as an ASCAN (Astronaut Candidate) and completed her training in 1979. Along with a few astronauts, Sally was initially responsible for helping develop the shuttle’s robot arm — officially referred to as the shuttle remote manipulator system (SRMS or RMS) designed to move materials, such as satellites, in and out of the space shuttle’s cargo bay. During her training and following her marriage to Steve Hawley in July 1982, Sally was chosen soon after to serve on the STS-7 Challenger shuttle which launched on June 18, 1983.

After completing her second mission aboard the Challenger, Sally was scheduled for a third mission following a mission that would carry an ordinary citizen and school teacher, Christa McAuliffe, who would prepare and teach science lessons aboard, but would perish along with six astronauts on January 28, 1986 when the shuttle exploded 73 seconds after its launch into orbit. After hearing of the Challenger’s catastrophe while flying to Houston, Sally went directly to the Astronaut Office at JSC (Johnson Space Center). Because of the shuttle’s destruction and tragic loss of life, NASA suspended all future shuttle flights indefinitely. Sally Ride was involved with the Rogers commission, which investigated the accident and its cause—destruction of the O-Ring seal. Due to the uncertainty of the space program’s future, Sally decided that she would stay to work through the recovery process. In the years following the Challenger’s disaster, Sally published a report on leadership and America’s future in space. After establishing the Office of Exploration, Sally Ride left NASA soon thereafter.

Sally Ride Promotes STEM Education and Science Careers for Girls

Following her divorce from Steve Hawley, Sally reconnected with her childhood friends Tam O’Shaughnessy and Susan Okie. With their shared interest in education and science, Sally partnered with Susan Okie to write To Space and Back for children ten years and up. In this book, Sally describes her experiences while working in a space shuttle and descriptions of space. In her enthusiasm to teach and encourage children's and teens’ love of science and space, she soon learned that while younger girls like science and math, they start to lose their self-esteem and confidence when reaching middle school while boys are strongly encouraged to pursue STEM careers. Sally, seeing this need to encourage girls to remain enthusiastic in pursuing scientific interests, started a company, Imaginary Lines. She used her astronaut fame to promote this endeavor. The company focused on creating science-related events, programs, and activities that appealed to girls. Sally stated, “We're doing summer science summer camps for girls. We're doing one-day festivals—science festivals for middle school girls at nationwide college campuses around the country.”

In supporting the STEM education program for boys and girls, Sally assisted in recruiting 100+ heads of U.S. Corporations to launch Change the Equation in September 2010, a non-profit group whose goal was raising the level of learning and promoting “the tools they needed to become future innovators in American industry.” Sadly, however, six months after the organization’s formation, Sally discovered that she had developed pancreatic cancer and passed away at 61 years old on July 23, 2012.

References

Macy, S.(2014). Sally Ride: Life on a Mission. New York: Alladin.

O’Shaughnessy, T. (2015) Sally Ride: A Photobiography of America's pioneering woman in space. New York: Roaring Brook Press.

Sherr, L.(2014). Sally Ride: America's first woman in space. New York: Simon and Schuster.