September 5, 2023 • 27 mins
In 1978, NASA opened its astronaut training program to women. Bloomberg space reporter Loren Grush recounts their challenges and achievements in her new book The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts. She joins this episode to talk about the extraordinary careers of Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid and Rhea Seddon—and the mark each astronaut left on the history and future of space exploration.
Read more: How NASA Chose Its First Woman In Space
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Space Shuttle challengers. Five astronauts are sleeping now after
a virtually flawless launch and first day. This is the
seventh Shuttle mission, and with no hitches, it might have
been considered routine. But as the challenger climbed today, it
carried an American woman astronaut, Sally Ride, into space and
into history.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The story of the first American men to go to
space has been well told. Those brave Kaki test pilots
were selected for Project Mercury in nineteen fifty nine because
they had the right stuff, as the author Tom Wolfe
famously put it, But it wasn't until nineteen seventy eight
that NASA opened the door for women to join the
(00:40):
US astronaut program.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
The civil rights movement happened, the feminism movement happened. That's
when NASA started getting questions about, Okay, why is this
not a priority, And so it really was something they
just could not ignore anymore.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
That's Bloomberg Space reporter Lauren Grush In a new book
called The Six The Untold Story of America's first women Astronauts,
she recounts the very different path these pioneers took to
reach NASA and the challenge is they had to overcome
along the way. I'm wes Kasova today on the Big
(01:22):
Take the Women who Shattered the Highest glass ceiling, Lauren.
This is a really big book, for one hundred and
thirty plus pages. How long have you been at it?
Speaker 4 (01:41):
It has been a three year project.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
But to be fair, if you've ever edited a piece
of mine, you'll know that I always tend to write long,
so I actually was concerned I would not meet the
word count, but then, of course I exceeded it and
had to cut a.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Lot out of it.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
But hey, when you're writing a biography of incredible women,
there's not enough pages for all of the interesting things
that they've done.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
So why don't you tell us about the six?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (02:09):
So, I think everybody has some kind of idea of
who Sally Ride is. Obviously, she's the first American woman
to go to space. I bet some people don't even
know she was actually the second woman ever to go
to space. But yes, Sally Ride's name kind of resonates
for a lot of people. But what I think a
lot of the public doesn't know is that she was
one of a group of six women who could have
(02:31):
all been the first American woman to go to space.
They were all extremely qualified, but one of them had
to go first. And so with the six, I really
wanted to shine light on the other five women's stories
and also the accomplishments that they made, because obviously they
did amazing things as well, they just had different spots.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
In the order. I mean, these six women, they're just incredible.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
So just to name them, obviously we know Sally Ride,
she's a form i'mer tennis player and astrophysicist. Judy Resnik
she's an electrical engineer and the second American woman to
fly to space. There's Kathy Sullivan, an oceanographer and geologist,
also the first American woman to perform a spacewalk.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
After her came Anna Fisher.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
She's an emergency room doctor and she became the first
mother to fly to space. After her was Ray Seddon,
also a surgeon and a doctor, and followed up by
Shannon Lucid, who was a chemist.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
What's so interesting about this is that all of them
started the same year in the same class of astronauts.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Right absolutely, they were selected among a group of eight
thousand applicants in nineteen seventy eight. So what the selection
committee did was they actually narrowed that down to over
two hundred finalists, and these women were among those finalists,
and they had to go through what I think is
a very extreme selection process. They had to come down
(04:01):
to Houston, Texas, where the NASA Johnson Space Center is,
and go through a week of physical exams, medical exams,
they had to undergo a psych evaluation. The biggest thing
they had to undergo and was really kind of what
decided their fate, was an hour and a half long
interview with the selection committee. And I can only imagine
(04:22):
that was probably the most intimidating interview of one's life.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
But yes, it was simply just to gauge a little
bit more about who they were.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
They talked about what they had done in high school
and what led them to the now, and through that process,
the selection committee members tried to understand if this really
was the job for them and if they could hack
it as an astronaut.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Even the idea that they were up for selection was
pretty historic because women just weren't allowed in before in
nineteen seventy eight, right, So.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
The requirements prior to when these women joined were very
limiting for folks back when NASA was first formed, they
were gathering people for the Mercury seven. It was very strict.
You had to be a test.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Pilot, and back then the only people who could be
test pilots were men because women were banned from flying
jets for the military, and so it was pretty much
guarantee that women could not join. And at the same time,
they also wanted people who were engineers and scientists with
advanced degrees, so it was probably the most stringent requirements
(05:30):
you could possibly have back then. Then over time, you know,
as NASA tried to fix its mistakes and be more inclusive,
they also created a new role, which was called the
Mission Specialists. So while they still prioritized pilots and people
with jet experience who could fly the Shuttle, they created
this new role which was for astronauts who had backgrounds
(05:52):
in engineering, stem and so all they needed to be
selected was a degree in one of those fields. Obviously
an advanced degree was preferred, and they had to be
a certain height, and they had to pass a basic
physical exam, which also I believe had relaxed requirements. So
it was the most inclusive selection process that NASA had
(06:14):
ever done, and at the same time, they also very
much wanted to spread the word to women and people
of color at the time. They made that a priority,
and so that allowed for a much more diverse pool
of applicants to apply, leading to the sixth joining and
also during their class, they were the first women, but
(06:35):
it also included the first three black astronauts to join
the program and also the first Asian American astronaut.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Why nineteen seventy eight, What was the thing that made
NASA realized they needed to go past the kind of
fighter jock selection process.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Well, let's not forget that they still got flack for
simply picking men. Back in the sixties.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
There was a great of.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Women who underwent a series of tests that the Mercury Seven,
the first seven astronauts that NASA picked underwent.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
The thirteen women passed.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Those tests, and they desperately wanted to keep training to
potentially go to space one day, but they were blocked
from pursuing that dream further, and so there was a
congressional hearing in which they desperately tried to get NASA
to consider them and to let them keep training, but
it just wasn't.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
A priority for NASA at the time.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Simply because we were in a space race with the
Soviet Union. So I think the idea was that anything
that detracted from winning that race was seen as.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Some kind of detriment, and that wasn't a priority.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
I believe that this nation should commit it, so achieving
the goal before this decade is out of landing a
man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.
No single space project in this period will be more
impressive to mankind, are more important for the long range
exploration of space.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
In the meantime, the Soviet Union did end up sending
the first woman into space, but NASA downplayed that that
was just not a race that the US was keen
on winning at the time. Then as the years progressed,
the world changed, the civil rights movement happened, the feminism
movement happened, and that's when NASA started getting questions about, Okay,
(08:29):
why is this not a priority. And there's some internal
work done in the book showing just how awful NASA's
diversity efforts were, and so it really was something they
just could not ignore anymore, and the selection committee in
the nineteen seventies really made that a priority, and ever since,
this class of astronauts was selected. Every subsequent astronaut class
(08:51):
has been closer to parity and equality than we had
back in the early days of the program.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
You said that one of the requirements was each of
these women astronauts had to have a degree in one
of the stem fields. If you look at the resumes
of these astronauts are pretty incredible. Most of them have PhDs.
Two of them were medical doctors. These were people who
had brilliant careers already before they decided to go into space.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Absolutely, but in reality, they faced a lot of struggles
even before they came to NASA, because some of them
really had to fight to be taken seriously in order
to pursue their academic ambitions. I mean, some of the
women were younger when they were chosen, but Shannon Lucid
was the oldest one of the bunch, and her story
I find extremely compelling because she grew up just slightly
(09:40):
a few years before many of the women in the book,
and that the amount of sexism and vitriol that she
faced just because she.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Wanted to work. She had so many men telling.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Her that she'd never get a job or that she
couldn't be paid the same as her male colleagues. You know,
she just was constantly trying to just be taken seriously,
and it was just such a struggle for her. So
I find those early days really compelling. Just to learn
what brought them to the types of careers that they wanted,
and then also learning about why they each wanted to
(10:15):
be an astronaut, I think was fascinating. One thing I
keep saying is the six is a great example of
there's no one true.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Path to space.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
They all had such diverse backgrounds and diverse interests. And also,
I think a lot of people assume that anyone who
wants to be an astronaut it was just this lifelong
dream from the start, But for half of them, it
really wasn't anything that they considered. A big part of
that was because they just didn't think it was possible
for them.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
So it was only when.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
The astronaut selection process was opened up to a bunch
more diverse class of people that they thought, oh, this
is something I could do. I think I could be
really good at it. And I think that's a great lesson.
When you make opportunities available for people, they start to
realize that they can do these things that they didn't
think they could do before, and you find much more
(11:08):
interesting and unique people than you would have found.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
After the break. Getting into the space program was just
the first challenge these astronauts had to face. Lauren getting
selected for this space program was obviously a big milestone,
But then these women astronauts went into a culture that
(11:34):
was very male, and you write that they faced all
kinds of challenges once they got in the door.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
First and foremost, the challenges revolved around training. So for
Kathy Sullivan, who was an oceanographer and geologist, you know,
she would probably breeze through the sections about oceanography and
geology because you know, a lot of the satellites they
deployed were actually looking back at Earth.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Same for Sally Ryde.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
She was an astrophysicist, and when they did after physics lessons,
I'm sure she was old hat for her. They had
to stay current on a NASA's fleet of T thirty
eight jets, described to me as the hardest jet to fly,
but they were back seaters, so they didn't actually fly
the pains themselves. But when talking to some of their
former colleagues, it was admitted to me that some of
them let them take off in the land, which was
(12:21):
a no no back then. But I would say probably
one of the biggest dressers that the women had to
deal with was unfortunately our press ancestors. So back in
the day, the media was not so enlightened in how
they covered the first six women, and that was reflected
in some of the terrible questions that they asked.
Speaker 6 (12:40):
What happens when you meet a man who's not in
the space program and doesn't know who you are, and
you say I'm an astronaut, as they say, you're too
cute to be an astronaut. Come on, a little lady,
you can't be an astronaut.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
I just tell them I'm an engineer.
Speaker 6 (12:54):
You don't tell them you're an astronaut.
Speaker 7 (12:55):
I'm lucky.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
Ask do you really? I mean, when you meet people
for the first time, what about the whole business about
social relationships? Does it make it? Are some men another
factory to in Nashrona.
Speaker 8 (13:06):
I don't know if they are, They're probably not my friends.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
That was astronaut Judy Resnik being interviewed in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
When the women were first announced to the world. One
member of the press asked if Shannon's three children were
considered when they selected her. The women had to undergo
water survival training in order to fly in the T
thirty eight jets, So basically they had to show that
if they bailed out of the jet, they could survive
(13:35):
landing in water under parachutes.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
That was one of their first big training sessions.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
And as they were training, the press kind of just
mobbed them in the water.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
There were boats and rafts of.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Press trying to take pictures of them as they're undergoing
this very sensitive training exercise, one that they really needed
to be focused on, and the press would yell things
at them. I think there's one instance of somebody yelling,
you know, give us a smile, and maybe Ray or
Sally shot back no, and somebody also yelled back, hey, miss.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
And Ray said it's doctor.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
You know.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
A great exchange is like that.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
But I think one of the biggest examples of how
a lot of growing up the press still had to
do was when Sally Ride was first picked.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
For her flight.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Her press conferences that she did with the media are
just so cringey to listen back to, and there's some
great quotes from there. I think the biggest one that's
probably the most infamous is before she launched on her flight,
someone from Time asked her if she cried or wept
when something went wrong in the simulator, and she handled
(14:43):
it the best she could, she just laughed and she
was just, you know, why doesn't anyone ask Rick, her colleague,
one of those questions.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Here's Sally Ride speaking to Gloria Steinem in a nineteen
eighty three interview on ABC.
Speaker 8 (14:57):
Really, the only bad moments in our t involved the press.
The press was an added pressure on the flight for me.
And whereas NASA appeared to be very enlightened about flying
women astronauts, the press didn't appear to be. The things
that they were concerned with were not the same things
that I was concerned with.
Speaker 6 (15:17):
They were since the bathroom facilities.
Speaker 8 (15:19):
Bathroom facilities?
Speaker 7 (15:19):
How much did you get to ask that?
Speaker 8 (15:21):
Just about every interview I got asked that everybody wanted
to know about what kind of makeup I was taking up.
They didn't care about how well prepared I was to
operate the arm or deploy communications satellites.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Lauren, that's sort of the outside world looking in and
seeing these women as a curiosity. What about inside the
program itself?
Speaker 3 (15:41):
When the women came in. They did really try their
best to be inclusive for them. They had to make
space for women as they came in. But obviously, you know,
not everyone was on board with this. You know, there
were some astronauts who were already with NASA at the
time who were on record as saying, you know, I
kind of considered this job to be a man's job.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Even some of the astronauts they came in with them
were a little skeptical.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
A lot of the military folks, they just weren't used
to working with women at a professional capacity, so that
took a little getting used to, and they obviously had
some biases when they came in. Some have admitted to that,
But as they worked more with them and saw just
how hard they trained and how hard they were working,
they reformed their attitudes and realized that this job was
(16:30):
just as female as it was male. And you know,
they also came into resistance with other women, so some
of the astronauts or the men's wives were not so
keen on the women working with their husbands. So, as
I mentioned, the women had to stay current with their
T thirty eight training, and that meant spending a lot
(16:51):
of time in the backseat with one of their male coworkers,
and some of the wives of those astronauts didn't want
them flying with the women in their back seat. And
there was also just some of the men thought that
maybe working closely with the women would be seen as
improper and that had to quickly be abandoned because they
(17:12):
had so much work.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
That they had to do together. There are definitely some
hiccups along the way, but a lot of the women
have expressed to me that they were treated very fairly
and they were very happy with the way they were treated.
Speaker 6 (17:24):
But once you got into the program, wasn't there a
little bit of resentment or a little bit of male
chauvinism that was demonstrated to there's a very male kind
of fighter pilot world that you were in.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Drink not at all.
Speaker 8 (17:34):
As a matter of fact, I think everybody leaned over
backwards to make sure that we were treated as equals.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
I think another thing that they also did not want
was to be singled out in any way. So they
very much expressed that they didn't want to be the
girl astronauts. They wanted to be one of the guys.
So they were very keen on not making big displays
of their gender once they arrived at NASA. I mean,
(18:01):
there's a great moment where somebody tried to hold the
door open for Sally Ride and she just pushed him
right through, which is very in tune with her personality
from what I've learned of her. Anytime someone could refer
to them as a lady astronaut, they shot that down
very quickly, and it was very much in their interests
to be considered just one of the guys.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Learn After all this training, it came time to fly,
and your book opens with this just beautiful, serene moment.
Can you describe what happened? It involves Anna Fisher.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
I opened the book with the night before Sally Ride
takes her first trip to space. It's obviously a huge moment,
and one thing that I learned, Anna Fisher was the
lead cape crusader for Sally's flight. So cape crusader is
a fun little term to refer to the support astronauts.
(18:55):
Many of the astronauts would work the missions. They'd go
down to Cape Canaveral in Florida, and they were responsible
for the switch checklist, so they would make sure all
of the switches in the cockpit or the cabin were
set to where they needed to be prior to flight,
and at the time, Anna Fisher was very pregnant with
her first daughter, and so she had one of those
(19:18):
shifts where she had to stay in the cockpit and
watch the switches before Sally came in. And I just
thought it was an amazing moment because here she is
a pregnant woman. I think she was about eight months
pregnant at the time, and just that sight of a
pregnant woman watching the cockpit waiting for the first American woman.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
To fly to space.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
I thought that was a really poetic scene and a
great way to open the book.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
And then you have just the absolute mayhem when Sally
Ride took her place in that cockpit.
Speaker 7 (19:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
I think luckily for Sally, she was kind of unaware
at the time of just the entire media mob that
was down the road.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
It was just the media.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
I mean, I think there were about five hundred thousand
people who'd come to Florida that day to witness Sally fly.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
And you describe what it was like actually for her
in the cockpit.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Yeah, I think for her it was finally dawning on
her that this was actually going to happen. And she
has this great quote that she later said that once
the engines ignited and they started flying, she was overcome
with this realization that her fate was not her own,
that whatever was going to happen to her was going
(20:39):
to happen to her in that moment, and she just
kind of had to surrender to the engineering and you know,
hope for the best.
Speaker 8 (20:47):
The thing that I'll remember most about that flight is
that it was fun, and in fact, I'm sure it's
the most fun I'll ever have in my.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Life when we come back the post NASA years, Lauren,
Once that glass ceiling was broken once and for all,
then women became a regular part of Space Shuttle and
(21:14):
other missions after that. What happened to the six they each.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Went on to fly, I think the order I mentioned
them earlier, that's the order in which they flew. After
Sally Judy Resnick flew, she was the second American woman
in space, and so you can only imagine what was
the question that she was constantly asked. Was she upset
that she wasn't the first? And she handled that very gracefully.
And she also admitted to a colleague that after watching
(21:42):
Sally in the odyssey that she went through. You know,
Sally dealt with press before her flight. It was after
she came back that the kind of the floodgates just
opened and the amount of request for her was just.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
Staggering and overwhelming.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
So Judy expressed that when she saw that level of
attention that she was actually quite content with going second. Tragically,
for Judy, though she did fly to space once and
then on her second flight, it was the infamous Challenger accident,
and she sadly lost her life.
Speaker 7 (22:14):
There appears to have been a very serious accident involving
the Space Shuttle Challenger. The launch took place just a
few minutes ago, a few moments ago from Cape Canaveral.
It had been delayed four times. It appeared to be
a good launch at the point of departure from the
pad at Cape Canaveral. There had been, as we said,
(22:35):
previous delays of four different attempts. This was the fourth one.
It had been delayed a couple of hours by ice
by a faulty gauge. Then it appeared everything was good
for a launch, but shortly after the launch there was
an explosion.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
After Judy Kathy Sullivan flew and she actually flew with
Sally on her flight, so that was Sally's second flight,
and that trip was also incredible because she became the
first American woman to perform a spacewalk.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
And then Kathy also went on to have an amazing career.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
She was part of the Space Shuttle crew that deployed
the Hubble Space Telescope. And even beyond that, Kathy is
just an avid explorer. That's part of her history which
I detail in the book. And even recently, she made
history in twenty twenty, she dove into Challengers Deep in
a tiny submersible.
Speaker 9 (23:27):
Remember the name Kathy Sullivan, Folks. She made history as
the first US woman astronaut to walk in space, and
now another historic journey puts her in a league of
her own. She recently became the first woman to reach
Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in the Western Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Following her was Anna Fisher, and I mentioned that she
was pregnant when she sat in the cockpit for Sally's flight. Well,
she gave birth to her daughter, Kristen, and so when
she flew, she was actually assigned to her flight just
before she gave birth, and when she flew she became
the first mother to fly to space.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Also, Kristen Fisher is a friend in peer.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
She's now a space reporter herself at CNN, which I
think is very apt.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
After Anna flu Ray said and came next.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
She was worried her flight was going to be a
bit boring, but she experienced a bunch of delays with
her mission that made her really frustrated, and it looked
as if they were just going to deploy a couple
of satellites and call it a day. Obviously, astronauts are
very eager to fly, no matter what.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
It is their aim in life to go to space.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
But there are some space flights that are more fun
than others. Obviously if you do a space walk, that's
more exciting if you go on a higher inclination around
the Earth. So for Ray, she was worried it was
just going to be a couple satellite deployments. But then
one of the satellites doesn't deploy as planned, and so
they have to do this quick kind of regrouping.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
And I referred to it.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
As a heist because the way they had to kind
of fix the satellite. Following her as Shannon Lucid and
it's ironic that Shannon was last, because she was probably
the one that was most keen to go to space
out of all of them.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
You know, she had a lifelong ambition to be an astronaut.
Speaker 8 (25:15):
Well, I'm just really proud to be an American and
I'm just really part proud to be part of this
cooperative program that we have going with the Russians.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
It was just a great mission and I just had
a great time.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
And then all of them went on to have amazing careers.
Some of them left the program fairly early after the
Challenger accident. Sally Ride left fairly soon after that, and
she dedicated her life to academia. Probably her biggest claim
to fame post NASA is creating Sally Ride's science and
nonprofit that was geared towards inspiring young children, notably young girls,
(25:50):
to get into STEM. And also Sally's story doesn't in there.
She wound up falling in love with another woman named
tam O'Shaughnessy, who was one of her childhood friends and
also a tennis player who they played together.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Tragically, Sally did.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Die in twenty twelve from cancer, but when she died,
her partner came out and proclaimed that she was her
partner and had been her partner for many decades at
that point, and that made Sally the first known LGBTQ astronaut.
And Tam told me that, you know, her coming out
and revealing that she's received, you know, a ton of
(26:30):
letters and notes from people saying that her doing that
made them comfortable coming out as well, and so she's,
you know, very grateful for that. I feel like, honestly,
I could write six more books about all of these women.
There's so much information about them that I could not
include in the four hundred pages that I did, So
(26:50):
there's plenty of information, and I encourage everyone to read
as much as they can about these women because they
are just fantastic.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Lauren, always great talking to you. Congrats on the book,
Thanks for coming.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
On the show, Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
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(27:29):
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Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin. I'm West Kasova.
We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take.
The Space Shuttle challengers. Five astronauts are sleeping now after
a virtually flawless launch and first day. This is the
seventh Shuttle mission, and with no hitches, it might have
been considered routine. But as the challenger climbed today, it
carried an American woman astronaut, Sally Ride, into space and
into history.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The story of the first American men to go to
space has been well told. Those brave Kaki test pilots
were selected for Project Mercury in nineteen fifty nine because
they had the right stuff, as the author Tom Wolfe
famously put it, But it wasn't until nineteen seventy eight
that NASA opened the door for women to join the
(00:40):
US astronaut program.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
The civil rights movement happened, the feminism movement happened. That's
when NASA started getting questions about, Okay, why is this
not a priority, And so it really was something they
just could not ignore anymore.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
That's Bloomberg Space reporter Lauren Grush In a new book
called The Six The Untold Story of America's first women Astronauts,
she recounts the very different path these pioneers took to
reach NASA and the challenge is they had to overcome
along the way. I'm wes Kasova today on the Big
(01:22):
Take the Women who Shattered the Highest glass ceiling, Lauren.
This is a really big book, for one hundred and
thirty plus pages. How long have you been at it?
Speaker 4 (01:41):
It has been a three year project.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
But to be fair, if you've ever edited a piece
of mine, you'll know that I always tend to write long,
so I actually was concerned I would not meet the
word count, but then, of course I exceeded it and
had to cut a.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Lot out of it.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
But hey, when you're writing a biography of incredible women,
there's not enough pages for all of the interesting things
that they've done.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
So why don't you tell us about the six?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (02:09):
So, I think everybody has some kind of idea of
who Sally Ride is. Obviously, she's the first American woman
to go to space. I bet some people don't even
know she was actually the second woman ever to go
to space. But yes, Sally Ride's name kind of resonates
for a lot of people. But what I think a
lot of the public doesn't know is that she was
one of a group of six women who could have
(02:31):
all been the first American woman to go to space.
They were all extremely qualified, but one of them had
to go first. And so with the six, I really
wanted to shine light on the other five women's stories
and also the accomplishments that they made, because obviously they
did amazing things as well, they just had different spots.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
In the order. I mean, these six women, they're just incredible.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
So just to name them, obviously we know Sally Ride,
she's a form i'mer tennis player and astrophysicist. Judy Resnik
she's an electrical engineer and the second American woman to
fly to space. There's Kathy Sullivan, an oceanographer and geologist,
also the first American woman to perform a spacewalk.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
After her came Anna Fisher.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
She's an emergency room doctor and she became the first
mother to fly to space. After her was Ray Seddon,
also a surgeon and a doctor, and followed up by
Shannon Lucid, who was a chemist.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
What's so interesting about this is that all of them
started the same year in the same class of astronauts.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Right absolutely, they were selected among a group of eight
thousand applicants in nineteen seventy eight. So what the selection
committee did was they actually narrowed that down to over
two hundred finalists, and these women were among those finalists,
and they had to go through what I think is
a very extreme selection process. They had to come down
(04:01):
to Houston, Texas, where the NASA Johnson Space Center is,
and go through a week of physical exams, medical exams,
they had to undergo a psych evaluation. The biggest thing
they had to undergo and was really kind of what
decided their fate, was an hour and a half long
interview with the selection committee. And I can only imagine
(04:22):
that was probably the most intimidating interview of one's life.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
But yes, it was simply just to gauge a little
bit more about who they were.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
They talked about what they had done in high school
and what led them to the now, and through that process,
the selection committee members tried to understand if this really
was the job for them and if they could hack
it as an astronaut.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Even the idea that they were up for selection was
pretty historic because women just weren't allowed in before in
nineteen seventy eight, right, So.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
The requirements prior to when these women joined were very
limiting for folks back when NASA was first formed, they
were gathering people for the Mercury seven. It was very strict.
You had to be a test.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Pilot, and back then the only people who could be
test pilots were men because women were banned from flying
jets for the military, and so it was pretty much
guarantee that women could not join. And at the same time,
they also wanted people who were engineers and scientists with
advanced degrees, so it was probably the most stringent requirements
(05:30):
you could possibly have back then. Then over time, you know,
as NASA tried to fix its mistakes and be more inclusive,
they also created a new role, which was called the
Mission Specialists. So while they still prioritized pilots and people
with jet experience who could fly the Shuttle, they created
this new role which was for astronauts who had backgrounds
(05:52):
in engineering, stem and so all they needed to be
selected was a degree in one of those fields. Obviously
an advanced degree was preferred, and they had to be
a certain height, and they had to pass a basic
physical exam, which also I believe had relaxed requirements. So
it was the most inclusive selection process that NASA had
(06:14):
ever done, and at the same time, they also very
much wanted to spread the word to women and people
of color at the time. They made that a priority,
and so that allowed for a much more diverse pool
of applicants to apply, leading to the sixth joining and
also during their class, they were the first women, but
(06:35):
it also included the first three black astronauts to join
the program and also the first Asian American astronaut.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Why nineteen seventy eight, What was the thing that made
NASA realized they needed to go past the kind of
fighter jock selection process.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Well, let's not forget that they still got flack for
simply picking men. Back in the sixties.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
There was a great of.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Women who underwent a series of tests that the Mercury Seven,
the first seven astronauts that NASA picked underwent.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
The thirteen women passed.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Those tests, and they desperately wanted to keep training to
potentially go to space one day, but they were blocked
from pursuing that dream further, and so there was a
congressional hearing in which they desperately tried to get NASA
to consider them and to let them keep training, but
it just wasn't.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
A priority for NASA at the time.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Simply because we were in a space race with the
Soviet Union. So I think the idea was that anything
that detracted from winning that race was seen as.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Some kind of detriment, and that wasn't a priority.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
I believe that this nation should commit it, so achieving
the goal before this decade is out of landing a
man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.
No single space project in this period will be more
impressive to mankind, are more important for the long range
exploration of space.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
In the meantime, the Soviet Union did end up sending
the first woman into space, but NASA downplayed that that
was just not a race that the US was keen
on winning at the time. Then as the years progressed,
the world changed, the civil rights movement happened, the feminism
movement happened, and that's when NASA started getting questions about, Okay,
(08:29):
why is this not a priority. And there's some internal
work done in the book showing just how awful NASA's
diversity efforts were, and so it really was something they
just could not ignore anymore, and the selection committee in
the nineteen seventies really made that a priority, and ever since,
this class of astronauts was selected. Every subsequent astronaut class
(08:51):
has been closer to parity and equality than we had
back in the early days of the program.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
You said that one of the requirements was each of
these women astronauts had to have a degree in one
of the stem fields. If you look at the resumes
of these astronauts are pretty incredible. Most of them have PhDs.
Two of them were medical doctors. These were people who
had brilliant careers already before they decided to go into space.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Absolutely, but in reality, they faced a lot of struggles
even before they came to NASA, because some of them
really had to fight to be taken seriously in order
to pursue their academic ambitions. I mean, some of the
women were younger when they were chosen, but Shannon Lucid
was the oldest one of the bunch, and her story
I find extremely compelling because she grew up just slightly
(09:40):
a few years before many of the women in the book,
and that the amount of sexism and vitriol that she
faced just because she.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Wanted to work. She had so many men telling.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Her that she'd never get a job or that she
couldn't be paid the same as her male colleagues. You know,
she just was constantly trying to just be taken seriously,
and it was just such a struggle for her. So
I find those early days really compelling. Just to learn
what brought them to the types of careers that they wanted,
and then also learning about why they each wanted to
(10:15):
be an astronaut, I think was fascinating. One thing I
keep saying is the six is a great example of
there's no one true.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Path to space.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
They all had such diverse backgrounds and diverse interests. And also,
I think a lot of people assume that anyone who
wants to be an astronaut it was just this lifelong
dream from the start, But for half of them, it
really wasn't anything that they considered. A big part of
that was because they just didn't think it was possible
for them.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
So it was only when.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
The astronaut selection process was opened up to a bunch
more diverse class of people that they thought, oh, this
is something I could do. I think I could be
really good at it. And I think that's a great lesson.
When you make opportunities available for people, they start to
realize that they can do these things that they didn't
think they could do before, and you find much more
(11:08):
interesting and unique people than you would have found.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
After the break. Getting into the space program was just
the first challenge these astronauts had to face. Lauren getting
selected for this space program was obviously a big milestone,
But then these women astronauts went into a culture that
(11:34):
was very male, and you write that they faced all
kinds of challenges once they got in the door.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
First and foremost, the challenges revolved around training. So for
Kathy Sullivan, who was an oceanographer and geologist, you know,
she would probably breeze through the sections about oceanography and
geology because you know, a lot of the satellites they
deployed were actually looking back at Earth.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Same for Sally Ryde.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
She was an astrophysicist, and when they did after physics lessons,
I'm sure she was old hat for her. They had
to stay current on a NASA's fleet of T thirty
eight jets, described to me as the hardest jet to fly,
but they were back seaters, so they didn't actually fly
the pains themselves. But when talking to some of their
former colleagues, it was admitted to me that some of
them let them take off in the land, which was
(12:21):
a no no back then. But I would say probably
one of the biggest dressers that the women had to
deal with was unfortunately our press ancestors. So back in
the day, the media was not so enlightened in how
they covered the first six women, and that was reflected
in some of the terrible questions that they asked.
Speaker 6 (12:40):
What happens when you meet a man who's not in
the space program and doesn't know who you are, and
you say I'm an astronaut, as they say, you're too
cute to be an astronaut. Come on, a little lady,
you can't be an astronaut.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
I just tell them I'm an engineer.
Speaker 6 (12:54):
You don't tell them you're an astronaut.
Speaker 7 (12:55):
I'm lucky.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
Ask do you really? I mean, when you meet people
for the first time, what about the whole business about
social relationships? Does it make it? Are some men another
factory to in Nashrona.
Speaker 8 (13:06):
I don't know if they are, They're probably not my friends.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
That was astronaut Judy Resnik being interviewed in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
When the women were first announced to the world. One
member of the press asked if Shannon's three children were
considered when they selected her. The women had to undergo
water survival training in order to fly in the T
thirty eight jets, So basically they had to show that
if they bailed out of the jet, they could survive
(13:35):
landing in water under parachutes.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
That was one of their first big training sessions.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
And as they were training, the press kind of just
mobbed them in the water.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
There were boats and rafts of.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Press trying to take pictures of them as they're undergoing
this very sensitive training exercise, one that they really needed
to be focused on, and the press would yell things
at them. I think there's one instance of somebody yelling,
you know, give us a smile, and maybe Ray or
Sally shot back no, and somebody also yelled back, hey, miss.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
And Ray said it's doctor.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
You know.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
A great exchange is like that.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
But I think one of the biggest examples of how
a lot of growing up the press still had to
do was when Sally Ride was first picked.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
For her flight.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Her press conferences that she did with the media are
just so cringey to listen back to, and there's some
great quotes from there. I think the biggest one that's
probably the most infamous is before she launched on her flight,
someone from Time asked her if she cried or wept
when something went wrong in the simulator, and she handled
(14:43):
it the best she could, she just laughed and she
was just, you know, why doesn't anyone ask Rick, her colleague,
one of those questions.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Here's Sally Ride speaking to Gloria Steinem in a nineteen
eighty three interview on ABC.
Speaker 8 (14:57):
Really, the only bad moments in our t involved the press.
The press was an added pressure on the flight for me.
And whereas NASA appeared to be very enlightened about flying
women astronauts, the press didn't appear to be. The things
that they were concerned with were not the same things
that I was concerned with.
Speaker 6 (15:17):
They were since the bathroom facilities.
Speaker 8 (15:19):
Bathroom facilities?
Speaker 7 (15:19):
How much did you get to ask that?
Speaker 8 (15:21):
Just about every interview I got asked that everybody wanted
to know about what kind of makeup I was taking up.
They didn't care about how well prepared I was to
operate the arm or deploy communications satellites.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Lauren, that's sort of the outside world looking in and
seeing these women as a curiosity. What about inside the
program itself?
Speaker 3 (15:41):
When the women came in. They did really try their
best to be inclusive for them. They had to make
space for women as they came in. But obviously, you know,
not everyone was on board with this. You know, there
were some astronauts who were already with NASA at the
time who were on record as saying, you know, I
kind of considered this job to be a man's job.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Even some of the astronauts they came in with them
were a little skeptical.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
A lot of the military folks, they just weren't used
to working with women at a professional capacity, so that
took a little getting used to, and they obviously had
some biases when they came in. Some have admitted to that,
But as they worked more with them and saw just
how hard they trained and how hard they were working,
they reformed their attitudes and realized that this job was
(16:30):
just as female as it was male. And you know,
they also came into resistance with other women, so some
of the astronauts or the men's wives were not so
keen on the women working with their husbands. So, as
I mentioned, the women had to stay current with their
T thirty eight training, and that meant spending a lot
(16:51):
of time in the backseat with one of their male coworkers,
and some of the wives of those astronauts didn't want
them flying with the women in their back seat. And
there was also just some of the men thought that
maybe working closely with the women would be seen as
improper and that had to quickly be abandoned because they
(17:12):
had so much work.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
That they had to do together. There are definitely some
hiccups along the way, but a lot of the women
have expressed to me that they were treated very fairly
and they were very happy with the way they were treated.
Speaker 6 (17:24):
But once you got into the program, wasn't there a
little bit of resentment or a little bit of male
chauvinism that was demonstrated to there's a very male kind
of fighter pilot world that you were in.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Drink not at all.
Speaker 8 (17:34):
As a matter of fact, I think everybody leaned over
backwards to make sure that we were treated as equals.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
I think another thing that they also did not want
was to be singled out in any way. So they
very much expressed that they didn't want to be the
girl astronauts. They wanted to be one of the guys.
So they were very keen on not making big displays
of their gender once they arrived at NASA. I mean,
(18:01):
there's a great moment where somebody tried to hold the
door open for Sally Ride and she just pushed him
right through, which is very in tune with her personality
from what I've learned of her. Anytime someone could refer
to them as a lady astronaut, they shot that down
very quickly, and it was very much in their interests
to be considered just one of the guys.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Learn After all this training, it came time to fly,
and your book opens with this just beautiful, serene moment.
Can you describe what happened? It involves Anna Fisher.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
I opened the book with the night before Sally Ride
takes her first trip to space. It's obviously a huge moment,
and one thing that I learned, Anna Fisher was the
lead cape crusader for Sally's flight. So cape crusader is
a fun little term to refer to the support astronauts.
(18:55):
Many of the astronauts would work the missions. They'd go
down to Cape Canaveral in Florida, and they were responsible
for the switch checklist, so they would make sure all
of the switches in the cockpit or the cabin were
set to where they needed to be prior to flight,
and at the time, Anna Fisher was very pregnant with
her first daughter, and so she had one of those
(19:18):
shifts where she had to stay in the cockpit and
watch the switches before Sally came in. And I just
thought it was an amazing moment because here she is
a pregnant woman. I think she was about eight months
pregnant at the time, and just that sight of a
pregnant woman watching the cockpit waiting for the first American woman.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
To fly to space.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
I thought that was a really poetic scene and a
great way to open the book.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
And then you have just the absolute mayhem when Sally
Ride took her place in that cockpit.
Speaker 7 (19:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
I think luckily for Sally, she was kind of unaware
at the time of just the entire media mob that
was down the road.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
It was just the media.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
I mean, I think there were about five hundred thousand
people who'd come to Florida that day to witness Sally fly.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
And you describe what it was like actually for her
in the cockpit.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Yeah, I think for her it was finally dawning on
her that this was actually going to happen. And she
has this great quote that she later said that once
the engines ignited and they started flying, she was overcome
with this realization that her fate was not her own,
that whatever was going to happen to her was going
(20:39):
to happen to her in that moment, and she just
kind of had to surrender to the engineering and you know,
hope for the best.
Speaker 8 (20:47):
The thing that I'll remember most about that flight is
that it was fun, and in fact, I'm sure it's
the most fun I'll ever have in my.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Life when we come back the post NASA years, Lauren,
Once that glass ceiling was broken once and for all,
then women became a regular part of Space Shuttle and
(21:14):
other missions after that. What happened to the six they each.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Went on to fly, I think the order I mentioned
them earlier, that's the order in which they flew. After
Sally Judy Resnick flew, she was the second American woman
in space, and so you can only imagine what was
the question that she was constantly asked. Was she upset
that she wasn't the first? And she handled that very gracefully.
And she also admitted to a colleague that after watching
(21:42):
Sally in the odyssey that she went through. You know,
Sally dealt with press before her flight. It was after
she came back that the kind of the floodgates just
opened and the amount of request for her was just.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
Staggering and overwhelming.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
So Judy expressed that when she saw that level of
attention that she was actually quite content with going second. Tragically,
for Judy, though she did fly to space once and
then on her second flight, it was the infamous Challenger accident,
and she sadly lost her life.
Speaker 7 (22:14):
There appears to have been a very serious accident involving
the Space Shuttle Challenger. The launch took place just a
few minutes ago, a few moments ago from Cape Canaveral.
It had been delayed four times. It appeared to be
a good launch at the point of departure from the
pad at Cape Canaveral. There had been, as we said,
(22:35):
previous delays of four different attempts. This was the fourth one.
It had been delayed a couple of hours by ice
by a faulty gauge. Then it appeared everything was good
for a launch, but shortly after the launch there was
an explosion.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
After Judy Kathy Sullivan flew and she actually flew with
Sally on her flight, so that was Sally's second flight,
and that trip was also incredible because she became the
first American woman to perform a spacewalk.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
And then Kathy also went on to have an amazing career.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
She was part of the Space Shuttle crew that deployed
the Hubble Space Telescope. And even beyond that, Kathy is
just an avid explorer. That's part of her history which
I detail in the book. And even recently, she made
history in twenty twenty, she dove into Challengers Deep in
a tiny submersible.
Speaker 9 (23:27):
Remember the name Kathy Sullivan, Folks. She made history as
the first US woman astronaut to walk in space, and
now another historic journey puts her in a league of
her own. She recently became the first woman to reach
Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in the Western Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Following her was Anna Fisher, and I mentioned that she
was pregnant when she sat in the cockpit for Sally's flight. Well,
she gave birth to her daughter, Kristen, and so when
she flew, she was actually assigned to her flight just
before she gave birth, and when she flew she became
the first mother to fly to space.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Also, Kristen Fisher is a friend in peer.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
She's now a space reporter herself at CNN, which I
think is very apt.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
After Anna flu Ray said and came next.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
She was worried her flight was going to be a
bit boring, but she experienced a bunch of delays with
her mission that made her really frustrated, and it looked
as if they were just going to deploy a couple
of satellites and call it a day. Obviously, astronauts are
very eager to fly, no matter what.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
It is their aim in life to go to space.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
But there are some space flights that are more fun
than others. Obviously if you do a space walk, that's
more exciting if you go on a higher inclination around
the Earth. So for Ray, she was worried it was
just going to be a couple satellite deployments. But then
one of the satellites doesn't deploy as planned, and so
they have to do this quick kind of regrouping.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
And I referred to it.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
As a heist because the way they had to kind
of fix the satellite. Following her as Shannon Lucid and
it's ironic that Shannon was last, because she was probably
the one that was most keen to go to space
out of all of them.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
You know, she had a lifelong ambition to be an astronaut.
Speaker 8 (25:15):
Well, I'm just really proud to be an American and
I'm just really part proud to be part of this
cooperative program that we have going with the Russians.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
It was just a great mission and I just had
a great time.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
And then all of them went on to have amazing careers.
Some of them left the program fairly early after the
Challenger accident. Sally Ride left fairly soon after that, and
she dedicated her life to academia. Probably her biggest claim
to fame post NASA is creating Sally Ride's science and
nonprofit that was geared towards inspiring young children, notably young girls,
(25:50):
to get into STEM. And also Sally's story doesn't in there.
She wound up falling in love with another woman named
tam O'Shaughnessy, who was one of her childhood friends and
also a tennis player who they played together.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Tragically, Sally did.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Die in twenty twelve from cancer, but when she died,
her partner came out and proclaimed that she was her
partner and had been her partner for many decades at
that point, and that made Sally the first known LGBTQ astronaut.
And Tam told me that, you know, her coming out
and revealing that she's received, you know, a ton of
(26:30):
letters and notes from people saying that her doing that
made them comfortable coming out as well, and so she's,
you know, very grateful for that. I feel like, honestly,
I could write six more books about all of these women.
There's so much information about them that I could not
include in the four hundred pages that I did, So
(26:50):
there's plenty of information, and I encourage everyone to read
as much as they can about these women because they
are just fantastic.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Lauren, always great talking to you. Congrats on the book,
Thanks for coming.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
On the show, Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more
shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you.
Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg
dot net. The supervising producer of the Big Take is
Vicky Burgolina. Our senior producer is Catherine Fink. Federica Romanello
(27:29):
is our producer. Our associate producer is Zenobsidiki. Hil de
Garcia is our engineer, with additional production support from Jill Namazzi.
Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin. I'm West Kasova.
We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take.
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Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
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