Sally Ride
Sally Ride
Sally Kristen Ridewas an American physicist and astronaut. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman in space in 1983. She remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32. After flying twice on the Orbiter Challenger, she left NASA in 1987. She worked for two years at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, then at the University of California, San...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAstronaut
Date of Birth26 May 1951
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
There's a huge amount of pressure on every astronaut, because when you get right down to it, the experiments that are conducted on a space flight, or the satellites that are carried up, the work that's to be done, is important and expensive work, and you are up there for a week or two on a Space Shuttle flight. The country has invested a lot of money in you and your training, and the Space Shuttle and everything that's in it, and you have to do things correctly. You can't make a mistake during that week or two that you're in space.
So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight.
Once you are assigned to a flight, the whole crew is assigned at the same time, and then that crew trains together for a whole year to prepare for that flight.
I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.
My background is in physics, so I was the mission specialist, who is sort of like the flight engineer on an airplane.
On both of my flights, everything went very well.
Today, the astronaut corps is almost 25% female, ... and I want that to continue to rise.
Women make up only 25 percent of the science, engineering and technology workforce... We are delighted to be working with NASA Ames to give Silicon Valley area girls a chance to explore and develop their potential in science at an age when many begin to drift away from their natural interest.
There are aspects of being the first woman in space that I'm not going to enjoy.
The women's movement had already paved the way, I think, for my coming.
My parents didn't have a scientific bone in their body, and their daughter was pursuing a career in astrophysics. They didn't even know what astrophysics meant, but they supported me,
If girls are interested, they have the potential to go further, ... There are still lingering stereotypes that affect girls in middle school, and they lose interest in the subjects.
It was hard to become an astronaut. Not anywhere near as much physical training as people imagine, but a lot of mental training, a lot of learning. You have to learn everything there is to know about the Space Shuttle and everything you are going to be doing, and everything you need to know if something goes wrong, and then once you have learned it all, you have to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice until everything is second nature, so it's a very, very difficult training, and it takes years.
Anything from making a mistake on an experiment that would ruin some scientist on earth's experiment - career, potentially - to doing something wrong with the satellite that a country was depending on for its communications, to making some mistake that could actually cost you and the crew either a mission or your lives. So there is a lot of pressure that's put on every astronaut to just make sure that he or she understands exactly what to do, exactly when to do it, and is trained and prepared to carry it out.