Sally Ride passed away 13 years ago this month. She was the first American woman astronaut to fly in space. One of the lines of dialogue spoken in The Right Stuff about the Mercury 7 was how they hadn’t achieved anything except being named the Mercury 7 as none had gone into space at that time.
Yet, training to be an astronaut isn’t easy. It’s a long process that takes years. And it’s a good thing the U.S. government felt that pilots who had been trained to fly and were also test pilots willing to take risks would be the right people for the job. Yet, it was still just a man’s job, a white man’s job to be exact. That was until the 1970s when women and non-white people were allowed to apply.
Ten years ago, there was a TV series The Astronaut’s Wives Club that was supposed to be about the wives of the Mercury 7. Yet, I didn’t watch it because the previews made it look so pretentious with Meghan Trainor’s “Lips Are Movin” playing over the promos. It felt more like The Help from that period of the 1950s and early 1960s where women were expected to know their place.
That being said, Ride and other women not only faced an uphill battle but there were many, many obstacles along the way. One of those was fellow NASA astronaut Mike Mullane, a self-admittingly sexist chauvinistic person who didn’t think women belonged in the space program at all. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t the only one. Women were seen only as typists and/or secretaries.
The documentary Sally directed by Christine Costantini focuses both on Ride’s professional and personal life. It wasn’t revealed until her death that she had been in a same-sex relationship with Tam O’Shaughnessy. She had been married to fellow astronaut Steven Hawley, who recalls their marriage was mostly for show.
Coming to prominence in the aftermath of Billy Jean King who openly admitted she was a lesbian, Ride was concerned about how she would be viewed. But there’s also suspicion it might have given NASA the reason they needed for expelling her. It was between Ride and Judith A. Resnik for the honor of being the first American woman in space. And Resnik was obviously the more pretty one that might have looked better on magazine covers.
But the marriage between Ride and Hawley was probably for her benefit as the public would see her more in a better light. Even though it was the 1980s, it was still a very primitive time especially after the failure of the ERA and criticism against women’s lib. Sadly, Resnik’s moment to shine would end in one of the worst disasters of the modern time as she would die along with the rest of the crew of the Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986.
The documentary reminds me of Citizen Kane as it has several people discussing Ride’s life and her strange upbringing in a household where she didn’t get much affection from her parents. And I think that’s why it might have been hard for her to take the position as she did. It’s been reported Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, was also a very private person. Maybe that’s why NASA chose them because they wouldn’t be too attention seeking.
Yet, Ride became a celebrity getting the attention even if she didn’t want it. She inspired many other people to look to the stars. That might be why she kept her private life so private. It was probably easier to do during an era where less people had a camera on their phone. It is easy for a lot of celebrities to walk away from the public life even in this day and age.
Footage of interviews in which men ask very sexist questions might show why Ride hid later in her life. But I think it had more to do with the investigation into the Challenger explosion as Ride sat on the board. She holds her ground and asks the tough questions. Then, she learned that NASA wasn’t going to admit much fault even though any layperson watching the hearings knew there were problems.
There has been some criticism that the movie focuses too much on Ride’s personal life than her life as an astronaut. But there’s no way to talk about one without the other. Every time an astronaut stepped into a capsule or a shuttle, there was a risk. Look at what happened on June 18 when the SpaceX rocket exploded. It’s quite possible the Challenger accident or the Columbia accident could happen and sadly they did.
It’s not a perfect documentary. The use of talking heads and archival footage is the type of thing that has become almost too common you know Costantini is probably asking the questions she wants answers to as well as editing out the footage she doesn’t want. If anything else, it shows how Ride not only change space exploration but show women were capable of doing more in the fields of math and sciences.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 