Ride or Die!

by NASA

In June of 1983, Sally Ride climbed aboard the Challenger and launched into history, becoming the first American woman in space. At just 32 years old, she was also the youngest American astronaut to leave Earth’s atmosphere — a fact often overshadowed by the circus of press coverage that preceded her mission. The space shuttle program was still young then, and so was America’s willingness to see women as equals in places that demanded more than polite applause. In the weeks before her historic flight, Ride faced a barrage of questions from reporters, many of them so absurd it’s hard to believe they were asked aloud. “Will the flight affect your reproductive organs?”, “Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?”

A People magazine profile from the time, written by journalist Michael Ryan, recorded these moments. Ride, always sharp, always measured, answered them with the kind of composure it takes to pilot a 2,000-ton spacecraft through the exosphere. When asked if space travel might cause her to cry at work, Ride shot back: “How come nobody ever asks Rick (fellow astronaut Rick Hauck) those questions?”

NASA itself wasn’t immune to the era’s awkwardness. In preparing her for the flight, engineers famously asked if 100 tampons would be sufficient for a one-week mission — an anecdote Ride would later recount with the dry amusement of someone who’d seen the absurdity of human limits both on Earth and beyond it. Sally Ride’s flight lasted six days, two hours, 23 minutes, and 59 seconds. But the fallout from her refusal to be diminished by sexist assumptions has lasted far longer.

She never stopped advocating for young women in science, co-founding Sally Ride Science in 2001. And though she passed away in 2012, Ride remains a symbol — not just for what she accomplished, but for what she endured with grace, clarity, and a good bit of side-eye. A pioneer, a physicist, an astronaut, and a quiet badass. This month we celebrate her birthday - May 26, 1951.