Sally Ride, First Woman in Space, Physics Professor
Introduction .Millions were glued to their TV sets as the Houston, Texas Mission Control counted down for the space shuttle liftoff. “That’s 5- 4- 3- 2-1. And ignition. We have ignition. And liftoff of STS-7 and the first American woman in space. Ride, Sally Ride!” Sally Ride and the rest of the astronauts in the space shuttle Challenger could feel the rumble, their spaceship surging high into the sky. In a few minutes they would be in space, circling the earth and doing experiments. What an adventure that would be! On television, the 1960’s show “Star Trek” began with the introduction “Space, the final frontier… to explore new worlds, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Space exploration has been a topic of great interest to men and women in America for several D. J. Mathews 18 decades. When the former Soviet Union sent up its first Sputnik satellite in 1957 around our planet, the U.S. worked to also get people and vehicles in outer space. President John F. Kennedy told the nation our goal should be to send a man to the moon and return him back safely to earth in the 1960s. No one mentioned or even thought of women in space in the beginning of what was called the space program. Not until they gave Sally Ride a chance. The Early Years.“Come on, sport, let’s go to the game.” Sally Ride’s dad Dale Ride was a big basketball fan. At Santa Monica Community College where he taught political science, there were some sports teams. Sally was the older of two daughters and more outgoing than her sister Karen. She went to ball games with her talkative dad when she was as young as five years old. Karen did more things with their quiet, more introverted mother. Sally was a California “Valley Girl.” She was born May 26, 1951 in Encino, California, a well-to-do region. It was a sunny community where Sally could become athletic by playing many outdoor sports. Dale and his wife Joyce Anderson Ride had a desire to know more about the world around them. They encouraged their daughters’ interest in science or whatever mattered to them. They also signed up to have foreign exchange students visit the family. An active child, Sally liked to skate, play softball, and tennis. This last interest her mother Joyce kept in mind when they all sailed on a big ship, the S. S. Rotterdam, in 1960, bound for Europe. Her dad visited places he’d fought in World War II; in Spain, Joyce had Sally try out tennis playing on a clay covered tennis court. “This is cool. I want to do this at home,” Sally decided. Great American Women In Science and Environment 19 “My, your Sally is like a ball of wind, always moving around, especially with tennis,” her mother’s church friend observed one day. “Does she ever stay still?” “Maybe, if we sit to watch TV,” said Joyce. “I gave her Treasure Island to read recently and she enjoyed that. But she may be getting serious about tennis as a career.” “Too bad she’s not serious about housework.” “Oh — well, Dale and I encourage the girls’ interests more than good housekeeping, I’m afraid,” Joyce admitted. Sally was so good at tennis as a teen that it helped her win part of a scholarship to pay for Westlake Preparatory School in nearby Los Angeles. Westlake was unique in that it was an all-girls school, which some believe helps female students study harder and do better overall. One of her science teachers was liked by many of the students. Elizabeth Mommaerts asked Sally after class, “Why don’t you consider a college major in science?” “I don’t know. I like playing tennis a lot,” Sally replied. Back then Billie Jean King was quite popular, proving to young women they could have a satisfying career playing tennis, and be as good as men too! From the 1940s on, science research had become a big part of American society. Scientists had created the formula to make a nuclear bomb; it killed thousands of people in Japan in August 1945. After the war the U.S. then worried about the goals of communist Soviet Union. The government worried the Soviets (now Russia) might bomb the country over disagreements with political ideas. There were evacuation D. J. Mathews 20 drills where school children hid under desks or in school cellars when Sally was in grade school. No nuclear bombs hit the United States. But the Soviets pushed ahead of us in the space program. In 1957, the Soviet launched into the atmosphere Sputnik 1 and 2, manmade satellites. Sputnik 1 was the size of a basketball and circled the earth while it monitored the earth’s atmosphere density. The U.S. decided to do something about this activity. NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was created in July 1958. In the 1960s, NASA became important. Hard work and practice missions prepared astronauts to fly and live in outer space. On July 20, 1969, they landed on the moon. They were a quarter of a million miles away. “Sally, come to the TV, quick!” “What’s happening?” asked Sally, who had been doing homework in her room. “They’re stepping on the moon!” her mother cried. Three men, Michael Collins, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong, had flown to the moon. Although the moon looks close by, it took them three days to fly to the moon and land. The spacecraft split into two pieces. Michael Collins flew the command module around the moon. The other two men in a “lunar” module went down to land on the surface. Later, half of the lunar module would blast off and meet up with the command module so all three could fly home. Great American Women In Science and Environment 21 A TV camera showed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin bouncing with big steps on the moon because of its low gravity. Armstrong famously said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind!” They moved among rocks and dirt and collected samples of it to take out. They put up a U.S. flag and also talked to President Nixon by telephone link. Although potentially quite dangerous because the moon was cold and airless, this was exciting for Sally to see. It helped her decide to study physics, which dealt with the inner workings of matter and energy. Tennis still had a pull on her. She decided to go to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. There she could take classes in astrophysics and English. She could also play tennis when she wasn’t going to parties or reading MAD Magazine. But it was so far from home. And the winters were long and cold! Back in California, between college semesters, Sally wondered if she could be a professional tennis player. But it didn’t exactly work out. “I just can’t play for hours and hours,” she told her tennis buddy Sue. “Why not?” Sue asked. D. J. Mathews 22 “I get sore. My body is worn out. My forehand isn’t that great. Let’s quit for the day and get an ice-cream.” She later wrote boyfriend John Tompkins she was just going to play tennis for fun only. John soon went off to do science research in Moscow in the Soviet Union. Sally moved her studies from Swarthmore to Stanford University in California. In 1970, only six percent of those with a B. A. or four year college degree in physics were women. Some professors even told the coeds like Sally “you’re taking jobs away from the men!” She stayed the course, taking classes in magnetism, electricity, and quantum mechanics. In 1973, her parents proudly watched her receive a diploma for a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in English and a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Physics. She went on to get a Master’s Degree in Physics in 1975, then a Ph. D. or Doctoral degree (so she could then teach at college full time) in 1978. Getting There The U. S. stopped sending men to the moon in 1972. But something new, a space shuttle, had been developed. Unlike other spaceships that had splashed into the ocean or broken up into parts, the space shuttle could be used in outer space and re-enter the atmosphere like a regular airplane, and slow down its speed to land on a runway. And it stayed in one piece. In 1977, while at college, she saw an advertisement from NASA. The space agency was looking to recruit young women astronauts to go up in space. They were looking for science majors. “Wow, this I have to try,” Sally told her folks. Over 7,000 people applied to be astronauts, and NASA whittled it down to thirty-five; several of those would be women. Sally Ride was on the list! With any job, there is education or special training. The future astronauts had classes in geology, oceanography, and systems that work the space shuttle. They went on field trips to observe and get in jets that the military uses. Sally practiced flying techniques on a big Boeing 747. She also went up in a T-38 jet that did rolls over the Gulf of Mexico.
