Sally

Mission Specialist Dr. Sally Ride now completing

her preparations for ingress into the Orbiter.

The countdown at T-minus

one hour, 40 minutes, 25 seconds, and counting.

All five of our flight crew are onboard now.

Dr. Sally Ride will be known as MS2.

Okay, team, this is MS2.

Are you ready?

MS2, I read you loud and clear.

- Some U.S. space history is to be made for the first time,

an American woman.

- America's first woman. - The first American woman.

The first American woman.

- America's first female astronaut will be

launched into space.

Her name is Sally Ride.

- Sally Ride. - Sally Ride.

- Sally Ride. - Astronaut Sally Ride.

- Sally, you're a star. - We're all behind you.

Ride on, Sally.

- Dr. Ride, have you felt that the press coverage has

been heavy-handed?

Press coverage?

I think that it's too bad that our society isn't further along

and that this is such a big deal.

Sally was the most famous person

on Earth for a while, and for good reason.

T-minus two minutes and counting.

I've come to realize that I will be

a role model.

The hydrogen igniters have been armed.

- Women get a chance to prove themselves,

hope she doesn't mess it up for us all.

I feel pretty strongly that it's important

that I don't do anything dumb.

25.

T-minus 25 seconds and counting.

The sequencer onboard now controlling the final seconds.

- I think it's time that people realize that women

in this country can do any job that they wanna do.

Sally risked everything

to make history.

But telling the world about us,

that was a risk she couldn't take.

T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six.

We have the main engine start,

we have main engine start.

And lift off!

Lift off on STS-7 and America's first woman astronaut.

- Hey, do you all know who this person is here?

- Yes. - You do?

What's her name?

- Sally Ride. - Yeah, right.

- Right. What's she do? - She's an astronaut.

- An astronaut? - That's right.

How do you eat?

Doesn't it float it up in the air?

- You wouldn't wanna have peas or anything like that,

because if you opened up a can of peas, they'd all.

- But how, how many here would like to go up in space

with Sally on the next ride?

Okay. We got a deal.

It's okay if we all go, right?

- Sure, no problem. - Okay.

Sally liked how people thought about her.

She was the golden girl and such a good role model.

- You look like you're having some trouble.

Is there something I can do to help?

Huh.

Well, this rocket here won't blast off.

She didn't want that to change.

We didn't plan to hide anything.

- I used to want to be an astronaut when I grew up.

- Did you really? - Yes I did.

There’s still time.

It hurt me, but I'm not sure it hurt Sally.

She didn't care about such things.

This is Tam interview, take one.

Action.

Action.

Um, could you start by introducing yourself,

tell me who you are, and maybe who you were to Sally?

Sure.

My name is Tam O'Shaughnessy, and, uh,

and I was her life partner for 27 years.

The first time I met Sally, she was 13, I was 12.

And we were standing in line with a bunch of other girls for

a tennis tournament.

It was boiling hot there.

I mean, I just have a picture of completely blue skies.

I was behind Sally in line.

I noticed her because she was standing on her toes.

And then when the line moved forward,

she was walking on her toes and I'd never seen somebody

do that before.

You know, I was just staring at her, kind of cracking up.

And Sally just happened to turn her head and notice me.

I said something like,

"You're walking on your toes like a ballet dancer."

That kind of started our friendship.

Sally was kind of quiet, but she would talk eight minutes

straight on different players and how to beat them,

how to whoop them.

- Her style of play was crafty, uh, drop shots,

and ball placement.

I got to play doubles with her and she wanted

to be on the side where the pressure was.

Some people are like that in the world.

If the game is on the line,

they wanna be the one that takes the shot.

And Sally was like that.

I grew up during the heyday of the space program.

It was on the front page of the newspaper every day and I still

remember our elementary school teachers wheeling those big old

black and white TV sets into the classroom so that we could

watch the very early launches.

I think all the kids dreamed of being astronauts

at one point or another.

That's one small step for man.

Boy.

Hey, I'm gonna be busy for a minute.

I loved science, but like many girls going

through middle school,

I started losing my self-esteem,

I started losing my confidence.

I started to internalize the subtle messages

that people often convey.

Because the space program was all male,

it frankly didn't occur to me that I could

be an astronaut.

- In 1976, NASA decided that they were going to

expand the Astronaut Corps and they were going to

include women and minorities for the first time.

I saw an ad in the Stanford student newspaper

by NASA saying that they were accepting

applications for astronauts.

The moment I saw that,

I knew that's what I wanted to do.

That very day I quipped off a little handwritten application.

"Now that the space program has evolved

to the point where women are being considered,

I feel that I'm being offered an incredible opportunity.

Further, I think that my background,

the scientific training in general and astrophysics,

qualifies me to contribute as much to the program as I expect

to get out of it."

So if she made a mistake,

she would just cross through it and keep going.

Sounds like her personality.

When NASA announced it was recruiting between

30 and 40 new astronauts,

more than 8,000 hopeful candidates responded,

including over 1,500 women.

I knew that I had a reasonable chance to

go a reasonable distance in the selection process.

I was gonna have a Ph.D.

by the time the selection process was over.

And, you know, I had a good athletic background.

Sally Ride's vital statistics include a string of

academic credentials that at first glance seemed

to belong to three people.

At Stanford University,

she simultaneously earned degrees in English and Physics,

then a Master's and Ph.D. in Astrophysics.

Sally was kinda a little bit

cocky about physics.

She loved that it was very challenging to learn.

Therefore, if you learned it, you were kinda hot stuff.

One night when we were in our 20s,

I invited Sally for dinner.

And we hadn't seen each other in a few years.

I just decided that I wanted to do something special.

I didn't make very much money,

but I bought steaks, some wine,

and we had lower light.

It was exciting and fun getting to know each other

again as adults.

She knew I was gay, I told her.

And I told her that I was dating this woman.

But I didn't know she had her own experience.

I had no clue.

- Sally was my first best friend as well as my

first relationship with a woman.

I never talked about my college years, you know,

because my college years were so wrapped up in Sally.

What I had with Sally was wonderful.

And for four years, we were together all the time.

But neither of us were talking to anybody outside of

our own little household about what was going on.

We certainly weren't holding hands outside the apartment.

I think that was what finally ended it for me is that,

that I couldn't live in that tiny little world.

I remember seeing Molly and Sally together,

but I didn't know.

I didn't know that until years later.

And when we had the romantic steak dinner that I

didn't realize was romantic,

we just talked and connected and it was a lovely evening.

She did tell me 10 years later that her feelings for me

started to change that night.