[ad_1]
You know Sally Ride as the first American woman to travel in space. But here are six things you may not know about the astronaut, born May 26, 1951.
1. Sally Ride proved there is such a thing as a stupid question.
When Sally Ride made her first space flight in 1983, she was both the first American and the youngest American to cross the last frontier. These two distinctions show just how skilled and dedicated Ride was with regard to his career, but they also opened him to many absurd questions from the media.
Journalist Michael Ryan recounted some of the more zany questions that had been asked of Ride in a June 1983 profile for People. Among the highlights:
Q: "Will flying affect your reproductive organs?"
A: "There is no evidence of that."Q: "Do you cry when things go wrong at work?"
A: "How is it that no one ever asks these questions to a fellow astronaut?"
Forget to go in the space; The most impressive achievement of Ride might have been to keep his cool in the face of such hurtful questions.
2. Had she followed Billie Jean King's advice, Sally Ride could have been a professional tennis player.
When Ride grew up near Los Angeles, she played more than just tennis and she excelled seriously. She was a nationally ranked junior player and when she was 18 in 1969, she was ranked 18th in the entire country. Tennis legend, Billie Jean King, personally encouraged Ride to become a professional player, but went to Swarthmore before being finally transferred to Stanford to complete his undergraduate work, a Masters and PhD in physics.
King did not forget the young tennis prodigy she had encouraged. In 1984, an interviewer asked in a playful manner to the star of tennis that she would like to take with her, to which King replied: "Tom Selleck, my family and Sally Ride, to bring us all back.
3. The home economics was not the best subject of Sally Ride.
After retiring from spaceflight, Ride has become a strong advocate for mathematics and science education, especially for girls. In 2001, she founded Sally Ride Science, a San Diego-based company that creates fun and exciting opportunities for elementary and high school students to learn mathematics and science.
Although Ride is an iconic female scientist with a Ph.D. in physics, she, like many other young people, has struggled academically as she grew up. In a 2006 interview with United States todayRide revealed her weakest subject at school: a seventh grade home economics clbad that all girls had to follow. As Ride says, "Can you imagine having to cook and eat a tuna cbaderole at 8am?"
4. Sally Ride was closely connected to the Challenger.
The two space flights of Ride were aboard the condemned shuttle Challengerand her training program for her third shuttle flight exploded during the tragic 1986 blast. Ride learned about this disaster at the worst moment: she was on a plane when the pilot announced the news.
Come up later said AARP the magazine that, when she heard the announcement of the mid-flight, she pulled out her NASA badge and went to the badpit to be able to listen to the radio reports of the fallen shuttle. The disaster prevented Ride from returning to space, but the personal toll was difficult to swallow as well. Four of the lost members of ChallengerThe crew had followed the Ride astronaut training clbad.
5. Sally Ride had no interest in taking advantage of her worldwide fame.
A 2003 profile in The New York Times She called Ride one of the most famous women on Earth after her two flights into space, and it was difficult to discuss this claim. Ride would easily have been able to take advantage of all the endorsements, movie offers, and ghost book offers she had received, but she missed most of the opportunities to get paid quickly.
Ride subsequently made some forays into the publication and endorsements. She has written or co-authored more than half a dozen children's books on scientific topics, including In the space and at the backand in 2009, she appeared in a print advertisement for Louis Vuitton. Even appearing in an advertisement was not an effort to fill his bank account, however; The ad contained a photo of Annie Leibovitz's Ride with fellow astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell, looking at the moon and the stars. According to a spokesperson, the three astronauts donated a "significant portion" of their modeling costs to the Al Gore Climate Project.
6. Sally Ride was the first LGBTQ astronaut.
Ride died on July 23, 2012 at the age of 61, after a long and very private battle against pancreatic cancer. Although Ride's brief marriage with fellow astronaut Steve Hawley was widely known to the public (they were married from 1982 to 1987), it was only until his death that Ride's long-standing relationship with Tam O 'Shaughnessy – a childhood friend and science writer – was made public. Which meant that even in death, Ride was changing the world again because she is known to be the first LGBTQ astronaut in the world.
[ad_2]
Source link
