Becca’s Favorite Women

McAuliffe did not survive to leave the atmosphere. She died in the Challenger explosion.

But she was a schoolteacher. An average, everyday woman who didn't buy her way aboard the space shuttle, but earned it. She planned to teach the first two school lessons from space. Millions of schoolchildren watched the launch live. My sister was one of them. If "where were you when Kennedy was shot" is the question for Boomers, and "where were you when you got the news on 9/11" is the question for Millennials, "where were you when Challenger exploded" is the question for Gen X.

McAuliffe was so beloved that her death basically ended the space craze in media at the time. I did a backward media trace of her death to see if it lined up with entertainment media reactions to 9/11, and the answer was: yes. Within two years of Challenger--I gave that much lead time for movies already in production when Challenger launched--space was gone from cartoons and movies. Basically nothing space went into production after her death, several space-themed shows were canceled, and the whole industry took a hard swerve into the buddy-cop genre.

Christa McAuliffe inspired a generation, and a nation grieved her when she was gone. For 73 seconds, she almost touched the stars, and America loved her for it.

FUCK miss yellowface rich girl.

In a space agency filled with trailblazers, Sally Ride was a pioneer of a different sort. The soft-spoken California physicist broke the gender barrier on June 18, 1983, when she became the first American woman in space.

Sally Ride’s place in history was assured on June 18, 1983, when she rocketed into space on Challenger’s STS-7 mission with four male crewmates. Her contribution to America’s space program continued right up until her death.

Ride joined NASA as part of the 1978 astronaut class, the first to include women. She and five other women, along with 29 men, were selected out of 8,000 applicants. The class became known as the “Thirty-Five New Guys” and reported to the Johnson Space Center the next summer to begin training.

And for that matter, how about real-life Barbie: Mae Jemison? Medical doctor, teacher, ballerina, astronaut, and author....

And also she was the first Black woman in space and one of the first Black students at Stanford University, entering it in 1973 at the age of 16.

Meanwhile Katy Perry *checks notes* wrote a song comparing Black men to aliens and suggesting they were rapists.

Thanks to Levar Burton, she was the first‐ever (but not the last) astronaut to appear in it. Nichelle Nichols (her inspiration!) visited her on-set.

Barbara Morgan — a schoolteacher and Christa McCauliffe’s backup on the Challenger mission — went through the same training as Christa and became very close with the other crew members. I’m going to name them: Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Judy Resnik, Ron McNair, El Onizuka, Greg Jarvis. When the Challenger went up, Babara watched from the roof of a NASA building and cheered her friends on, famously shouting “Bye Christa! Bye Crew!”

After the disaster, Barbara had to grapple with the grief of losing seven friends and supporting the spouses of the crew members. NASA shut down the civilian in space program and Barbara went back to teaching.

But Barbara’s dreams of being an astronaut weren’t dashed. 12 years after the Challenger Disaster, Barbara was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA and trained full time for the next two years. After more delays because of the space shuttle Columbia disaster, Barbara went to space on STS 118 with Endeavor, honoring the Christa McCauliffe and the Challenger crew, and completing Christa’s original mission of teaching from space via video feed.

After completing her mission and honoring her friends, Barbara left the space program went back to teaching.

Other notable woman astronauts that have not yet been mentioned include women like Roberta Bondar, Kalpana Chawla, Kathryn Thornton, Eileen Collins, Pam Melroy, Laurel Clark, Cady Coleman and all the others who are in the space program RIGHT NOW.

Judy’s mini portrait of herself in zero g 🥹

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judy RESNIK 💜