Space shuttle challenger sally ride7/29/2023 However, the program was suddenly canceled in 1962. Eventually, 13 women were identified, trained and passed NASA’s barrage of selection tests. The project was funded by Jacqueline Cochran, herself an elite pilot. The experiment evolved into a program that invited elite female pilots to undergo NASA’s testing regimen. When two male Air Force researchers wondered if women might better fit in small, cramped spacecraft, they decided to test the premise. In the early 1960s, a privately funded project called the Woman in Space Program challenged that status quo. ![]() Since the military didn’t allow women to be test pilots, applicants were, by default, men. The United States was even less eager to work with women astronauts: When it selected its first astronauts, it required all candidates to have engineering degrees and to have graduated from jet pilot testing programs in the military. Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, in front of the Vostok capsule, 1963. Valentina Tereshkova, a Russian cosmonaut who spent three days in space two decades earlier, was the world’s first, though the USSR took nearly 20 more years to send another woman to space. Though Ride’s 1983 flight on the Challenger space shuttle marked the first time an American woman had been in space, she wasn’t the first woman. And if not for a failed attempt to send American women to space, Ride may never have stepped foot on a space shuttle in the first place. ![]() But though her pioneering career smashed the space barrier for women, it wasn’t without its own moments of sexism. Ride kept the letter for the rest of her life. “However, we have no present plans to employ women on space flights because of the degree of scientific and flight training, and the physical characteristics, which are required.” “Your willingness to serve your country as a volunteer is commendable,” responded a NASA official. Halpern could have faded into the jumble of congratulatory letters or cards had she not enclosed another letter in her correspondence to Ride: a response she herself had been given when, as an elementary schooler in 1962, she wrote to ask how she could go to space. When she heard that Ride had made it into space, she wrote to her to thank her for fulfilling her childhood dream of space flight. But one of the most meaningful nods to her accomplishment was not from a NASA official or a head of state it was from an attorney named Linda Halpern. ![]() When groundbreaking astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983, she received plenty of congratulations.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |