Original subtitles

[♪ suspenseful music playing]

[cheering and applause]

[announcer] 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.

[heartbeat]

All five of our flight crew are onboard now.

Dr. Sally Ride will be known as MS2.

[Sally Ride] Okay, team, this is MS2.

Are you ready?

[controller] 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?

[Sally Ride] Press coverage?

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

and that this is such a big deal.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Sally was the most famous person

on Earth for a while, and for good reason.

[controller] T-minus two minutes and counting.

[Sally Ride] I've come to realize that I will be

a role model.

[controller] The hydrogen igniters have been armed.

- Women get a chance to prove themselves,

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

[Sally Ride] I feel pretty strongly that it's important

that I don't do anything dumb.

[controller] 25.

[announcer] 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.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Sally risked everything

to make history.

But telling the world about us,

that was a risk she couldn't take.

[announcer] 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.

[♪ theme music playing]

[♪ theme music playing]

[♪ Sesame Street theme playing]

- 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.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] 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.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] 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.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] It hurt me, but I'm not sure it hurt Sally.

She didn't care about such things.

[crew] This is Tam interview, take one.

- Action.

[producer] 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.

[Sally Ride] 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.

[Armstrong] That's one small step for man.

[anchor] Boy.

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

[Sally Ride] 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.

[Sally Ride] 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.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] "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.

[reporter] When NASA announced it was recruiting between

30 and 40 new astronauts,

more than 8,000 hopeful candidates responded,

including over 1,500 women.

[Sally Ride] 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.

[reporter] 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.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] 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.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] 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.

But I didn't, you know, I had no clue.

Shortly thereafter, she got the phone call from NASA.

[phone ringing]

[Sally Ride] I got a phone call very early in the morning

California time.

I thought maybe I was dreaming.

I had been accepted for the astronaut office.

Of course, I was thrilled.

[reporter] In early 1978, astrophysicist, Dr. Sally Ride,

notified her family of an important event in her career.

She'd been selected by NASA to be an astronaut candidate.

- I was very excited.

The first thing I did was I hung up the phone from talking

to George Abbey and I picked it up again and called

my mother and then called my sister, called my father.

They're almost as excited as I am.

My mother's reaction was that my,

I have another sister who's in theology.

She's at a theological seminary.

And my mother said, "Well, you know,

one of the two of them is going to get to heaven."

- Up to now, the men on the moon have been

just that, men, not women.

In fact, up to now, all astronauts have been men,

and White, not Black.

- The United States Space Agency has appointed 35 new astronauts,

including six women, three Blacks, and one Oriental.

♪ It was all science fiction till they landed on the moon. ♪

♪ Now all my space comic books are in the history room. ♪

[Sally Ride] When I got to NASA, it was the coolest thing.

And from that point on, I really dreamed of getting a

chance to go into space myself.

♪ Can you hear us singing from the galaxy next door? ♪

[Sally Ride] We walked in as rookies in the Astronaut Corps.

None of us knew anything about what was about to happen to us.

That was really the turning point in my life.

[overlapping chatter]

- I'd like to welcome all of our new friends to Houston,

and the Johnson Space Center.

We found over 8,000 people who were interested in being

astronauts and who applied.

- The very first trip down to Houston was all 35 of us,

just to introduce us,

in a big, formal press splash.

There were 10 people the likes of whom had never

been in NASA's Astronaut Corps before.

- Sally Ride.

She's presently a research assistant in the

Physics Department at Stanford University,

Stanford, California.

[Kathy Sullivan] There was a huge spotlight turned on

the 10 of us that were different.

And so we were in just a press gauntlet for hours and hours.

[crew] Kathy Sullivan.

[Kathy Sullivan] It kind of attuned us to what was coming.

You're now a public figure.

They're not gonna just wanna know about your hopes for the

space program or what you wanna do.

They'd wanna get at the stereotypical angles,

the romantic angles, the hair and makeup angles,

the fashion angles,

the angles they're used to applying to women

that they're covering.

[reporter] What happens when you meet a man who's not in the

space program and doesn't know who you are and you say,

"I'm an astronaut"?

Does he say, "Hey, you're too cute to be an astronaut?

Come on, little lady.

You can't be an astronaut"?

- I just tell him I'm an engineer.

[reporter] When do you expect to go up in the shuttle?

[Judy Resnik] Oh, it's gonna be a few years for us

who are relatively new, but it's worth the wait.

[reporter] The Space Shuttle Columbia is scheduled

to take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida

on its initial test flight.

[Sally Ride] I can't wait to get up.

I think that we're all eager to each get up ourselves.

- Everybody wanted to be first male and female.

And that's just the nature of who we were.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] The astronauts knew that

certain people were important.

But the actual process, what criteria they used,

it was an absolute black box mystery.

They didn't know, you know, should I be more friendly?

Should I work an extra two hours?

They didn't know what the formula was.

- There was no question that Sally wanted to be the first.

She never would have admitted that in an interview.

Every interview you read with her, she'll say,

"Oh, well, I just wanna fly."

- I didn't come into this program to be the

first woman in space.

I don't have any great desire to be the first woman.

That doesn't mean all that much to me,

but getting up as soon as I can does.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Some of the training is really hard.

Parachute jumping, the Vomit Comet,

the airplane that dips and dives.

It gives them 20 seconds of weightlessness.

- It was a Vomit Comet.

Yeah, it, it was well-named.

[reporter] The women astronauts had been subjected to the same

exercises as their male counterparts.

They've been hoisted, dunked, and pulled,

taught survival techniques, learning to use some of the

tools they'll be taking with them on the

real shuttle flights.

- All the while, there were all these media folks

all around you.

[Kathy Sullivan] They're watching very closely how

you're doing.

"Can these people really hack it,

in the unknowns and the uncertainties,

the potential hazards?"

[reporter] Do you think that you are as good as

any male astronaut here?

- Yeah.

[reporter] And better than some of them?

- I'm, I'm not stupid enough to say that.

- It got narrowed down in almost everyone's minds between

Sally or Judy Resnik.

Judy was always considered a strong contender.

She's really smart, really good engineer.

- Sally and Judy were like apples and oranges.

They're two entirely different types of personalities.

Judy was a sweetheart and she was extraordinarily

bright and capable but she loved having fun.

Sally was much quieter.

Her personality was strictly business.

- I never really saw her display a lot of emotion.

Is she mad?

Is she happy? Is she upset?

I don't know.

That made her a little bit hard for people to get close to.

[Anna Fisher] She did have a rough edge to her.

I don't think she knew how to be friends with someone

she was competing with.

[Sally Ride] One of my first assignments was on the

shuttle's robot arm.

It was still in the testing and development stage.

[Anna Fisher] By virtue of your assignments,

that would put you in a position where you would be

eligible to be first.

[Kathy Sullivan] The point of the robot arm was to be able to

pluck satellites out of the shuttle and put it into space.

Having that assignment was a big deal.

[Anna Fisher] Sally was a very good arm operator,

as was Judy.

[Judy Resnik] Yeah, it drifted aft of the bay,

aft of the center.

I've got it at 45 and 30 now.

[Tam O'Shaughnessy] Because of her hand-eye coordination

from being a tennis player,

Sally just took to it and figured out how it could

work in space, and so people noticed that she had

mastered the robotic arm.

- Those kind of factors might put you in a fast track

to an early flight.

Sally had a very different competitive mindset

than the rest of us.

One day, we're training and I'm practicing on the

big robotic arm.

I'm up at that panel to start working with it and I notice

Sally pass behind me and go down the ladder

to the deck below.

And, suddenly, the arm stops moving... abruptly.

And so I go into troubleshooting mode and

eventually work my way back to the circuit breakers which are

on a panel that you go by that panel as you go down that

ladder and they've all been pulled out.

So it became clear to me that Sally,

on her way down the ladder,

had just quietly popped, popped, popped

the circuit breakers out.

Was Sally just helpfully playing instructor and seeing

if I could figure it out?

Was she sending some kind of signal,

like "That's my manipulator arm.

What are you doing with it?"

Or just messing with my head?

If any of the six of us was consciously

aiming at "I want that prize,"

I would bet it probably was Sally.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] I couldn't understand the excitement of

working for NASA, quite frankly.

I thought it would be like the most boring,

constrained place on the Earth to work,

and just not open-minded to people of color.

You know, if you're queer, you know, get out of here.

I took a much different path.

Instead of going to college,

I joined the first-ever women's professional tennis tour,

the Virginia Slim Circuit.

I did play the US Open and Wimbledon.

And I met a lot of wonderful people,

including a female tennis player from Sweden.

We had become friends and then I realized the way I was

thinking about her was sort of, uh, different.

It was kind of gay.

And it, it shocked me.

And I was afraid.

Growing up, I got the message about homosexuals or lesbians,

you know, are very scary people.

- Most Americans are repelled by the mere

notion of homosexuality.

The CBS News survey shows that two out of three Americans

look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort, or fear.

- I think it's revolting.

And it says in the Old Testament,

it's an abomination against God.

- It's not American, you know?

- I think they should be shot if you ask me.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] At first, all the fear and shame that we

grew up with rose up in me.

You have to be careful.

You have to cover who you are.

You have to hide how you feel.

And all of that stuff started.

But I came from this tennis environment where they just did

not care who you were dating or who you were sleeping with.

I connected with a growing community of women who were

willing to be more open about their sexuality.

There was a whole movement happening across the country.

- If they thought that we were everywhere in the 1970s,

wait till they see the 1980s.

[Tam O'Shaughnessy] Seeing other members of the queer

community out marching and being themselves was inspiring.

I decided I was gonna tell my sisters and my mom.

I saw that it was possible to be honest about who I was and

it felt really good.

I feel lucky to have experienced that when I was,

you know, 19, 20, 21, you know?

Sally had a completely,

much more constrained environment.

When Sally and I started dating, she brought this to me.

And it, I have to say, it surprised me because it's,

it's two women.

It's beautiful, but it just surprised me a little bit

'cause I knew she was private and she wasn't out and,

and proud and all that sort of stuff.

Sally just did not talk about how she felt

about personal things.

Even as a youngster,

she was very private, even then.

Her whole family, they did not have that intimate,

inside-the-guts kind of relationship.

[producer] What was Sally like as a kid?

[Joyce Ride] I think she was kind of closed mouthed

about how she felt.

[producer] What do you attribute that to?

[Joyce Ride] It's none of your business.

My name is Joyce Ride.

[producer] And what's your relationship to Sally?

[Joyce Ride] Sally?

She was my number one child.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Sally's parents were

progressive thinkers,

very open-minded, and both of them just believed that

their daughters could do anything they wanted to do.

Sally's childhood was, in a way, ideal,

but on the other hand, her parents didn't show much

affection to each other or to Bear and Sally.

- Being Norwegian, we were not a family that

shared feelings a lot.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Sally absorbed the message that too

much exuberance, too much emotion is not what we do

around here, you know?

[producer] Why do you not like talking about feelings?

[Joyce Ride] If I knew how I felt about feelings

I would probably not tell you.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] She didn't learn how to express her

emotions because they were not expressed at home.

Sally and I would, for example, like drive up to visit her mom,

knock on the door.

Joyce would answer and, "Hello, oldest daughter,"

you know, and, "Hello, Tam."

And then kinda go back to what she was doing.

So there was no like, "Come on in."

Hug.

You know, hug Sally.

"Oh, I haven't seen you, love you."

None of that.

Absolutely none.

She, she went back to the dining room table to do

whatever she was doing.

[producer] And did you know that they were together

at the time?

That they were dating?

[Joyce Ride] Well, yes.

But it wasn't something we talked about.

[reporter] Do you see yourself, at this point, as a

"right stuff" kind of astronaut?

- You wanna define that?

[reporter] Well, I think what Tom Wolfe does is something

like death-defying, fighter jock, et cetera.

- No, I don't think so.

Out of roughly 4,000 technical employees at

the Johnson Space Center, there were only four women.

So that gives you a sense of how male the culture was.

[Kathy Sullivan] The hierarchy of big meetings,

the main table had always only ever been men.

I can recall some kind of perplexed looks.

"What's that girl doing, whose secretary is sitting

at the table?"

[reporter] Is there any difference being a female

astronaut as opposed to being a male astronaut?

Is there anything positive, anything negative,

anything funny?

- No.

I don't think, I don't think you ought to even address that

question in your program.

[reporter] Do I.

- I would like you to cut that out, okay?

[reporter] Fine. That's it.

- All of us tried to downplay our femininity.

Sally and I went shopping together.

We were looking for brown khaki pants and shirts

that looked like what the guys wear.

We wanted them to think of us as one of the team and

not as a female astronaut.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] This is a jacket that I think

Sally enjoyed wearing, you know,

with her aviator sunglasses.

She was channeling, you know,

the Apollo astronauts and all their,

kind of their macho, cocky, cocky ways.

[Anna Fisher] The women astronauts had a

fine line to walk.

On the one hand, they wanted to blend in.

But they also had to find a way to confront

the baked-in sexism of the culture of the time.

- No, either, what I, what I was saying was

it's not Ms. Ride.

It's either Doctor or it's Sally.

And you can take your choice.

[reporter] Okay.

[crew] Take your choice. It's probably easier--

[reporter] I think Sally for her.

[crew] We can use it one time, one way,

one time, the next way?

[reporter] Okay.

- That's right.

[crew] Huh? Just don't get.

[reporter] 'Cause we kinda...

- Well, that one's not right.

[reporter] Okay.

[Sally Ride] There are elements of NASA that really

don't know what to do with us.

Some of them are a little bit patronizing.

Every time they'll come to talk to one of us,

they're not quite sure what to make of us.

- I was a graduate at West Point.

Went to Vietnam.

134 combat missions over there.

I felt that the women who were selected hadn't paid

their dues like we had.

Quite a few of the military people shared my attitude.

You know, I thought Sally was very attractive.

Judy was beautiful.

That was the reality at the time.

You know, men saw women then for,

for the sexual creatures they were.

But women astronauts?

Are you kidding me?

- There, there. Astronauts don't cry.

[Mike Mullane] They'll panic at the first problem.

They'll be screaming. They'll be clutching.

They'll be looking for a man to hide behind.

- We must investigate, under controlled conditions,

the reactions of a woman to moon space environment.

- Well, Renzo, welcome to your new home.

[whimpering]

[automated voice] That unit is defective.

Its thinking is chaotic.

- That unit is a woman.

- I remember telling a joke and it had some

obscene language in it.

And you can obviously edit this out but the punch line

involved the word "tits."

And I could just see in her eyes, you know,

this look of "You're the most disgusting person

I've ever met."

And I didn't talk to her much after that.

I had never worked professionally with women.

I was very suspect of,

of them being able to perform in such a dangerous world

of high-performance flight.

I just couldn't see what they were gonna be bringing

to the table.

- The reason that women weren't able to go into space

in the early 1960s was really because they

had never thought about the astronaut being

anything other than a man.

[reporter] Is there any room in our space program for

a woman astronaut?

- Well, we could have used a woman,

and flown her instead of the chimpanzee.

Now, I--

[laughter]

[Margaret Weitekamp] In the late '50s,

a group of women pilots who went through all of the same

tests that had been put together for the male candidates

for the Mercury program.

- If we're going to send a human being into space,

we should send the one most qualified.

Women weigh less,

require less weight, food, and oxygen,

so you could go up in the same booster.

Go up higher or stay up a lot longer.

- The women did very well.

They did much better on the cardiopulmonary tests and

the sensory deprivation testing.

- But if you could find women better qualified than yourself,

how would you welcome them in the program?

- Oh. They would be very welcome.

[Margaret Weitekamp] Very few people spoke against

the women explicitly, but, eventually,

the program was canceled.

[Lynn Sherr] The Soviets, they got there first.

They had the first satellite with Sputnik.

They had the first human in space.

They had the first female in space,

Valentina Tereshkova.

But America wasn't ready for a woman for a long time.

[reporter] Sally, is there anybody here at NASA who is

still unconvinced that women have a place

in the space program?

- I think there are a few people that are,

that are waiting to see how I do.

Let me, let me put it that way.

[Lynn Sherr] After only one year of training,

Sally was chosen to be CapCom on STS-2.

[radio chatter]

That's like a plum position, the only person in

Mission Control to talk to the astronauts in space.

[Sally Ride] Okay. You're loud and clear now.

And we copied your RMS comments and it sounds great.

- Okay.

[Mike Mullane] It's a lot of responsibility.

And on that particular mission,

they had, had some problems.

[Lynn Sherr] During the mission,

heat tiles were damaged.

- Well, the first part of this ride is a real barn burner.

And we've got some flakes going by the window.

- The heat tiles are the only thing that protects

the shuttle when it comes back into Earth's atmosphere.

Without enough heat tiles, it blows up.

- So, there are some changes coming to them.

- But you don't want me to even mention that there are

changes coming until we get over the States.

- That's right.

- We'd like to take a look a little while longer at

the camera problem.

- Okay.

- The plan is at a standstill here, guys.

- You understand we've lost the, the camera.

The same failure.

The circuit breaker is out.

[Tam O'Shaughnessy] There was increasing frustration

in the control room.

Lives were on the line.

- Well, uh, fiddlesticks.

We need to decide what we're gonna do here.

CapCom, tell them to,

to go ahead and abort the grapple test.

- Okay. - Then we'll talk about

camera circuit breakers and reset some stuff later.

[Sally Ride] We got data down here to look at then

so let us think about that.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] She wanted to prove she could

handle the pressure.

[Sally Ride] Columbia, Houston,

while we're looking into the camera problem,

if you could give us spec one to a GNC machine,

we'll start that.

- She performed so well as CapCom.

She was articulate.

She was good under pressure. Smart, worked hard.

- Hi, Mom.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] And funny.

[reporter] You were the first female CapCom.

Were you scared? Did you love it?

What, what, what were you thinking then?

[Sally Ride] That was fun.

That is, that is, next to flying,

probably the best job in the astronaut office,

'cause I thought that it was, it was really an honor to be

the one that gets to talk to the crew.

Um, and I was scared to death.

[laughs]

- So this, I can't remember what year this was,

but this is Billie Jean King,

the fabulous tennis player, and Sally.

[Billie Jean King] I knew Sally in the early days.

She loved sports. She loved tennis.

She was a camp counselor at Tennis America.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Tennis America was a really cool

tennis camp that Billie Jean King started.

Sally was the best tennis player of all the tennis kids

and counselors at the camp,

and they became lifelong friends.

[reporter] It has been a spectacular career.

Billie Jean King has done for women's tennis what

Muhammad Ali did for boxing.

She has won 20 Wimbledon titles and

13 United States Open titles.

[Sally Ride] I have a lot of respect for her as a person.

I think that she's done a lot for women and is the

kind of person that can speak out articulately on things.

I admire her a lot.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Sally grew up watching Billie Jean,

hearing about her advocacy for girls and women.

Through Billie Jean, Sally learned what a

champion looks like.

And then, Billie Jean's life turned upside down.

- Billie Jean King has been served with a homosexual

palimony suit by a woman claiming she and the tennis

star were lovers for several years.

- Last week Billie Jean King told us of her lesbian affair.

The snickers could be heard worldwide.

The media had a field day with the story.

- The tennis star admitted at a news conference that

she'd had an affair some years back with her secretary.

- When I got outed, I lost every endorsement overnight.

So that's it. So I had to start over.

I had to pay a lot of money to the lawyers and

I have to start over, financially, every way.

- Tennis star, Billie Jean King,

has been dropped from her vitamin advertising campaign.

- My mom used to say,

"Billie Jean, don't forget your vitamins."

It was downhill for a lot of years.

Yeah.

- Any gay, you know, person of any renown,

they'd have to sit and think twice,

"You know, look what happened to Billie Jean."

It must have sort of served as a warning.

[Billie Jean King] Sally was probably thinking,

"Well, I'm not going there.

Oh, my God, if that happened to Billie,

what's gonna happen if I say anything

in this program?"

Being in the closet,

everything you do was measured and careful,

and you have to decide what to say and what not to say.

It's exhausting.

So you can never reveal much of yourself.

♪ I've been waiting patiently for my dream lover ♪

♪ To come to me. ♪

♪ Hoping you would say. ♪

[reporter] Astronaut Sally Ride and Steve Hawley got married

last month in Salina, Kansas.

They kept the news secret until this week.

[Lynn Sherr] Steve's father and Sally's sister,

both ministers, did the ceremony.

I didn't even know about it until after it happened.

Steve sorta didn't realize they were getting married either

till they finally got married.

[Bear Ride] We were kinda surprised when Sally said that

they were gonna get married.

Somehow I had sort of never pictured Sally getting married,

but there you had it.

[Lynn Sherr] It was an unusual wedding, to say the least.

They both wore white, white jeans.

♪ Welcome baby to my heart. ♪

[crew] Take one, sound 21.

- Uh, my name is Steve Hawley.

I'm from Salina, Kansas.

I'm Steve Hawley.

I was a member of the class of 1978 shuttle astronaut,

Sally was too.

So we were classmates.

I would say our relationship was always

sort of nontraditional.

Part of that was our personalities,

part of it was the jobs we had.

[reporter] When you have two astronauts married

to each other, is it different from say

two teachers or two lawyers?

Do you bring your work home with you?

- My guess is teachers would talk about teaching at home.

We talk about flight rules and flight performance reserves and

ISPs and solid rocket motor performance and

things like that.

But it's 'cause we enjoy it.

She had a great sense of humor.

She was athletic.

I was a little concerned that I might not be able to

keep up with Sally.

[Tam O'Shaughnessy] It just didn't gel with me.

It didn't feel quite right.

It just didn't feel like Sally.

- Certainly one of my first thoughts was,

"Great PR move.

That's gonna make for all the right publicity photos.

Handsome young astronaut couple.

Just fits a nice, neat package."

[reporter] What is your idea of a great evening at home?

- That one's easy. - Yeah.

- Lying in front of the television set with basically,

with our brains turned off, I think.

- Yeah, it's, it's so uncommon, I guess,

that we have a chance to, to be together with nothing

to do that we very much enjoy the times when we can

absolutely do nothing.

I can't say for sure that I know what motivated her

to want to go ahead and get married.

At the time I thought,

"Great, you know?" That's what I wanted too."

It just felt like we were getting married, both of us,

in good faith.

[Anna Fisher] She may have felt pressure, in case,

anybody thought she was gay.

- I don't know what mixture her motives might have been.

It might have been...

NASA was barely ready for women.

They're not ready for this.

[Molly Tyson] One time a very close friend asked Sally

directly, "Were you in a sexual relationship with Molly?"

She said, "Molly wanted it, but I didn't."

She had this really difficult line to walk.

It seems like a pretty good strategy to find someone

within the club.

It would serve her well.

You know, it would check another box.

[Tam O'Shaughnessy] Oh, God.

Okay.

So Sally would just send these sweet funky notes to me.

So this one,

"Dear Tam, while I was fooling around with trig identities,

I decided to tackle the problem of red

plus green equals yellow.

It works."

And so she actually did the math to show how you get yellow.

Red plus green equals yellow.

"Isn't physics wonderful?

You sure are.

Love, the mad physicist."

It's, it's a classic note from Sally.

It's just, it's fabulous.

[Mike Mullane] One morning, George Abbey called a meeting.

- Ken, you wanna get that back door?

- And he stood there and announced the crew for STS-7.

[John Fabian] Four names were announced.

There was a rather silent reaction.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] There were rumors that

Judy was the number one choice,

but George Abbey thought that Judy liked the

spotlight too much and Sally could care less.

So he convinced the others that it should be Sally.

[Sally Ride] We'd been in training for four years,

building up to this point.

And that's when George Abbey told me that I was gonna

be the first American woman to go into space.

I was numb and I really don't have any recollection

of how I felt.

I know that they wouldn't let us tell anybody else.

I just remember kind of walking around in a fog with

John Fabian most of the day, because he was in the same fog

that I was.

And that's about all that I remember.

- It was a feeling of unbelievable joy.

Sally and I were among the first people in our

class to fly.

She had earned that position on the first flight.

The balance that she had in her personality,

the seriousness with which she assumed her responsibilities,

her knowledge of the systems.

- Dr. Ride, what does it mean to you personally,

this achievement of, of going into space?

[Sally Ride] Oh, this is something that I've been

looking forward to ever since I came to NASA for the

last four years.

And it's a, it's a culmination of the work that I've been

doing since I came to NASA.

And I'm, I'm just thrilled to death to be able to do it.

♪ Sun is shinin' in the sky. ♪

♪ There ain't a cloud in sight. ♪

[reporter] It'll be the seventh shuttle mission,

but it will also be a first, for aboard will be America's

first female astronaut, a woman named Sally Ride.

[reporter] The 30-year-old astrophysicist will perform

experiments aboard the shuttle Challenger,

the first American woman in space.

♪ Mr. Blue Sky is living here today, hey. ♪

- I flew a lot with Sally.

Sally was a really, really good pilot.

One time, I asked Sally if she would go with me.

We flew out over the Gulf of Mexico.

We went through all of the acrobatics.

Things like turning yourself upside down and then diving

towards the Earth and pulling out the bottom,

it's called a "Split S Maneuver,"

and doing a complete circle.

And Sally is back there going, "Wee!"

It came natural. No training required.

♪ Mr. Blue Sky. ♪

♪ Mr. Blue Sky. ♪

♪ Mr. Blue Sky. ♪

♪ Mr. Blue, you did it right. ♪

[reporter] What does it feel like to be flying?

Is it a freedom kind of thing?

[Sally Ride] It's a feeling of being a little bit

above everything, being able to see a lot and

just kind of having the wind blow in your face.

It's a feeling really of exhilaration.

♪ I'll remember you this, ♪

♪ I'll remember you this way. ♪

♪ Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why you had to hide away ♪

♪ For so long. ♪

♪ So long. ♪

♪ Where did we go wrong? ♪

[reporter] Are you excited?

- Oh, yeah.

[reporter] George Abbey says one of the things they did look

at after you were selected was to figure out whether you could

handle the stress that might come from being the first woman.

Do you think you can?

- I hope I can.

[crew] Camera roll one.

Packing for, into the shuttle, uh, cartons, whatever.

[Kathy Sullivan] When the run-up to Sally's flight,

there's this question of, "Are there really issues with

a woman flying?

Have we thought of them all?"

There was a very conventional set of things in

the men's toiletry kits.

But what should go in the equivalent kit for a woman?

Sally was the first woman to take stock of what

they call crew equipment.

[Sally Ride] They knew that a guy might want a shaving kit.

But they didn't know what a female astronaut would take.

And so the engineers at NASA in their infinite wisdom...

...designed a makeup kit.

You know, a makeup kit brought to you by NASA engineers.

And then they asked how many tampons.

Should fly on a one-week flight.

[Kathy Sullivan] She gets to one of these toiletry kits and

it's a spring-loaded canvas-covered thing.

She pops it open.

[Sally Ride] He asked me,

"Is 100 the right number?"

I said, "No." "That would not be the right number."

[Kathy Sullivan] Sally keeps pulling this out like one of

those exploding snakes in a party trick.

All six of us for at least half a year,

would not have used every tampon that was in there.

[crew] 5-24-83.

Crew pre-flight press conference.

Camera roll one, sound roll one.

- Good afternoon.

It's really a pleasure to see such a, a large gathering.

I thought the flying of the shuttle would become rather

mundane and we couldn't bring out this size of group.

I think we know why most people are here though.

Sally, why don't you give us a rundown of some of the

experiments that you're dealing with?

- Okay, well, we're starting off the on-orbit operations

really on flight day one.

The only bad moments in our training involved the press.

They didn't care about how well prepared I was to operate

the arm or deploy communication satellites.

They wanted to know what I thought was extraneous things.

[reporter] Uh, Sally, has it taken a little bit getting used

to the idea of traveling in such tight quarters

with four men?

And do they tend to defer you?

Do they continue their gentlemanly ways when they're

with you in training?

- It really hasn't taken any getting used to.

I haven't, haven't felt like I've been deferred

to in any way.

In fact, Crip won't even open doors for me anymore.

- I learned that right away, Morgan.

[reporter] Dr. Ride, do you have any plans to

be the first mother who has traveled to space?

And Dr. Thagard, are there any reasons to be concerned about

the effects of travel in space on childbearing?

- Go ahead, Norm.

- Well, I'm not personally concerned.

- Jerry Henderson, Time magazine.

Dr. Ride, a couple of fast, quick questions here,

sir, ma'am?

What are you gonna do after the end of this flight?

Are you gonna, do you sense you'll become a footnote in

history, or will you go on the shelf?

What are your forward plans after this flight?

- Cancel your subscription to Time?

- Now, Dr. Ride, during your training exercises,

as a member of this group, when there was a problem,

when there was a funny glitch or whatever,

how did you respond?

Do you, do you weep?

Do you, what do you do?

- Why doesn't anybody ask Rick those questions?

- That's, the commander weeps.

[Sally Ride] I don't think that I react any differently than

anybody else on the crew does.

- Anything else from Washington?

- Okay. You ready?

[crew] Uh-hmm. Go ahead.

- Molly, first of all, you're very close to Sally Ride.

You lived with her during the college years.

- Mm-hmm.

- Is this gonna be your first launch you've ever seen?

- Yeah, I've seen them on television.

But this is the first time I, I will have been.

Sally invited me to the launch.

And there were lots of wonderful gatherings for the,

the friends and family of the astronauts.

And so I was attending those with my girlfriend

at the time, so it was pretty fun.

And then I got a note slipped to me.

That said, "Sally wants you to come for lunch at

the beach house."

And a little hand-drawn map.

The implication was,

"Don't tell anyone you're doing this 'cause nobody

can see them during this period."

You have to make sure you're not bringing in any germs and

so I had a physical.

And then I was ushered into the inner sanctum.

So that was my chance to see Sally with

these other astronauts.

And she just so much blended in.

They just exuded this kind of quiet confidence,

you know?

It was almost a humility that you want your heroes to have.

And then she was showing me her flight suit and

she's showing me her room and stuff like that.

And she said,

"I'm aware that this is not without risks,

I could die."

It was one of the very few times in our lives

that she had seemed vulnerable to me.

[Tam O'Shaughnessy] The night before Sally's launch,

she told me that she was afraid, that she was scared,

and that a former astronaut told her that if you're not

afraid, you don't know what's about to happen.

So she was fully aware that she was gonna be riding on

tons of rocket fuel that was exploding beneath her.

Anything could happen.

[John Fabian] The night before you go fly,

you look to the north, the west, and the south and

this constant line of headlights that's

coming out to the Cape.

They're coming to watch you fly and you hope they're

not coming to see you crash.

[reporter] Your most remarked upon attribute is you're cool.

Have you ever buckled under pressure?

- Not that I can think of,

but on the other hand I'm not sure that I've ever been under

that much pressure in my life.

[reporter] Will there be no second thoughts

for you personally?

[Sally Ride] I don't think so.

I, I guess that when they close the hatch and

light the engines,

I might, I might change my mind,

but I'm really looking forward to it.

[reporter] I think that would be too late.

I think that would be, very much, too late.

[Sally Ride] Yes.

[♪ inspirational music playing]

[♪ inspirational music playing]

[Lynn Sherr] Good morning.

It is a beautiful day and indeed this is Sally Ride's

day to make history.

Plenty of proud people, particularly female people,

are on hand to watch America's first woman go into space.

There were some half a million people who showed up at the

Kennedy Space Center and the surrounding area to

watch this happen.

And many of them brought their daughters, little daughters,

sometimes just babies.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Sally could invite 50 friends and family,

so she invited her friends from Stanford, tennis friends,

and Gloria Steinem,

Jane Fonda, and she invited me.

It was just unbelievable.

I get chills now just remembering it.

[Sally Ride] On launch day there was so much

happening around us.

I spent an enormous amount of effort just trying to stay

focused because it would have been way too easy to

just be lost in the moment.

[reporter] The crew comes out led by Commander Bob Crippen.

And the crew will be going out to the pad.

[Mike Mullane] At the pad, Sally would have looked

at that vehicle.

There's a soul-stirring moment when you're standing there,

the vapor around it.

One of those really moments that, "My God,

I'm really gonna do this."

[Sally Ride] Looking up and seeing this huge rocket that

kind of sounds like an animal.

You can kinda hear the gurgling and the hissing and it sounds

like it's alive.

[controller] The countdown clock at T-minus two hours,

five minutes, thirty seconds and counting.

This is shuttle launch control.

- Ready for a big day. - We got pretty day out here.

- Good looking machine.

- The commander and pilot will have their seats adjusted and

be placed in the proper position for launch.

Mission specialist,

Dr. Sally Ride, now completing her preparations

for ingress into the orbiter.

T minus one hour thirty minutes and counting.

All five of our flight crew are onboard now.

Okay, we have the final pilot on the port.

The hatch's closeout is complete.

[Sally Ride] Once we were inside the space shuttle

strapped into our seats and waiting and waiting as the

countdown got closer and closer to zero,

my mind started wandering and I, to focus it,

I focused on the most mundane things.

Where was my pencil?

Looks like it's about, I don't know,

a couple centimeters misplaced.

I better move it.

[controller] T-minus three minutes, twenty-five seconds.

The movement check of the main engines is underway.

T minus two minutes, fifteen seconds and counting.

The main engines have been moved to start position.

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

We go for main engine start.

We have main engine start.

And ignition.

And liftoff.

Liftoff of STS-7 and America's first woman astronaut.

And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

- Watch your roll, Challenger.

Houston now controlling.

Mission Control confirms all maneuvers started.

Twenty seconds.

Thrust looks good.

[Sally Ride] This sure is fun.

[Sally Ride] For a few seconds, everyone on the crew,

we were just totally overcome.

[controller] Confirmed the solid rocket booster separation.

The booster is falling away now.

[Sally Ride] It was a feeling really of exhilaration.

[reporter] The shuttle Challenger has made it to space

once again and Sally Ride has made it to the history books.

- Gloria, it was so exciting.

[Gloria Steinem] I was in the grandstand watching

there at the launch.

There were people with tears draining down their faces.

People I never would have expected.

You know, big diversity of people.

And yet they were all very moved by the human

audacity of it.

[Sally Ride] You know, there really isn't a way to

train for being weightless.

It's so far removed from a person's everyday experience

that even hearing other astronauts describe it,

didn't give me really a clue of how to prepare for it.

What I discovered was that,

although it took an hour or so to just get used

to moving around,

that I adapted to it actually pretty quickly.

[controller] Challenger, Houston got a good picture of

Norm and Sally now.

[Bob Crippen] Okay, Houston. Things are looking good onboard.

[controller] Roger. We copy and you all look good to us too.

[Sally Ride] I just, I love being weightless.

I think it's a feeling of freedom.

It's, it's really a neat feeling.

Good night, Norm.

[Norman Thagard] Good night, Sally.

[Sally Ride] Goodnight.

When I was a little girl,

I always dreamed of flying in space.

And unbelievably, that dream came true.

I can't explain why I wanted to do it.

It's just something that's a part of me.

I had the chance to float over to the window and

look out down at the Earth below.

At the absolutely spectacular view,

I could see coral reefs off the coast of Australia.

I could see glaciers in the Himalayas.

And the feeling of seeing your planet as a planet is

just an amazing feeling.

You can look at Earth's horizon and see this really,

really thin royal blue line.

And then you realize that it's Earth's atmosphere and

that that's all there is of it.

And it's about as thick as the fuzz on a tennis ball.

It's a totally different perspective.

And it makes you appreciate how fragile our existence is.

[Tam O'Shaughnessy] It really changed her to see there's no

borders around countries,

just all the imaginary lines of humanity.

[Sally Ride] From that perspective,

all the tribal fears we hold on to about race,

gender, nationality, who we love, all the

arbitrary restrictions we place on ourselves and

on each other, they mean nothing.

[John Fabian] Sally was having the time of her life.

And at the same time probably was concerned about

what was gonna happen next.

[controller] This is shuttle control.

Challenger entered the sensible atmosphere at

approximately 400,000 feet.

[Bob Crippen] Houston, Challenger, loud and clear.

Nice and smooth all the way down.

[controller] Real good, Crip.

[Bob Crippen] I'll say it once more.

What a way to come to California.

[controller] Do, do it again, just anytime.

[Lynn Sherr] Sally's foot landed and they were all a

little wobbly 'cause they had been in microgravity

for seven days.

Steve is there to meet her.

[Sally Ride] But the moment we landed,

I pretty much came face to face with just a flurry

of media activity.

Fasten your seatbelt.

- On the ground, someone hands Sally a bouquet.

She gives it back, and it blows up.

Sally was just saying,

I'm not a girl wife, I'm a crew member.

- Welcome home, STS-7.

[Kathy Sullivan] You are on all the time.

Anyone who can catch you doing something

a little unseemly,

they see an opportunity and taking advantage of

something you did for their headline.

- We were Sally and the four other guys.

The press wasn't paying attention to us.

We knew the story.

We knew the story was Sally Ride.

[Sally Ride] After my flight, everybody wanted a piece of me.

- She was the most famous person on Earth for a while.

[Sally Ride] NASA spent no time preparing me for what

I was going to encounter from the media when I got back.

Quite a surprise.

[reporter] Dr. Sally Ride and the men in the crew are at the

White House today for luncheon hosted by President Reagan.

[President Reagan] This is Dr. Sally Ride Day.

[announcer] Throwing out the first ball for tonight's

World Series game.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] She would go give talks,

go to schools, go to corporations.

It was just a madhouse.

[Sally Ride] I'd meet women that would start crying when

they met me,

and it was really overwhelming to me.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] It just took a lot out of her and

she was starting to feel anxious.

- Sally, like it or not,

you're a role model for a lot of young women

across the country.

How uncomfortable does, does that make you feel?

- Oh, I think it's important, um, that, that the,

the girls growing up and the young women have a role model.

So, you know, I think it's appropriate.

- She decided to see a therapist and she'd never considered that

before her entire life.

[Bob Crippen] She was a star,

but she really tried to hide from it as much

as she could.

They said, "Crip, we need you and Sally to go out and

be on The Bob Hope Show.

I'm a military guy and when I get an assignment,

I go do it. I expected she would as well.

[Lynn Sherr] Bob Hope did a lot of gags about women.

- You know, this isn't such a bad part.

[Lynn Sherr] Sally didn't wanna be part of it.

Then she disappeared.

- Being first isn't entirely about the joy of,

you know, the flight.

It's also about the obligations that come with it.

- Captain Robert Crippen right here.

[Steve Hawley] I didn't think it was right to accept

the good stuff but not be willing to do the tough stuff.

I didn't know where she was but that was how

she dealt with it.

She just left.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Sally came to Atlanta.

At the time, I was living there and I was studying biology.

We had dinner and Sally and I sat at a little table

and caught up.

Sally and I, even when we were kids,

we were always excited to see each other.

There was always kind of a good chemistry.

After that, anytime she was coming to Atlanta to do

something, she'd call me and we started getting together.

We'd run to the park, take tennis lessons,

go to pizza parlors, whatever.

That we had seen each other eight or nine times in

a couple of months.

So this one day in 1985 in the spring,

we came back to my apartment.

I had a Cocker Spaniel, Annie,

and I bent over to say hi to Annie,

and I noticed a hand on my lower back.

And it felt different, like your friends don't

usually do that.

And, you know, I turned to look at Sally.

She just had this dreamy,

"in love" look in, in her face, in her eyes.

In that moment,

I sort of realized that I kinda felt the same,

but it was kind of, I was surprised.

And I remember telling Sally, I just said,

"Oh, boy. We're in trouble."

And she said,

"We don't have to be, we don't have to do this."

And then we kissed, and it was all over.

[♪ uplifting music playing]

[♪ uplifting music playing]

And I asked her,

"You're married. What are we doing?"

Sally would, you know,

"I'm, I'm not in love with him, um,

I'm in love with you."

[Steve Hawley] She was, you know,

frequently doing her own thing, you know,

even before we were married.

I was working in Florida, so I was down there all week.

You know, I would call her up and say,

"We should be, you know,

getting in 7:00, Friday night."

Rather than say, "Good, because, you know,

I missed you,"

she would say,

"Well, I'm gonna be out of town. I'm going to California."

- Maybe I have no business asking.

Do you think about children?

[Sally Ride] Think about it sometimes,

but I think you're right.

You have no business asking.

- All right. - We've, uh, we've elected

not to, not to answer personal questions.

[Steve Hawley] She was always doing her own thing.

So the fact that she was gone a lot wasn't unusual.

I didn't feel like we were life partners.

We were more like roommates.

- She would just tell Steve, uh, "You know, I'll be gone."

And, and they didn't really talk about it.

But they were still married, so she had to be careful.

It was more spur of the moment.

Whenever the phone rang,

my heart would start beating and,

you know, run to the old phone.

I wanted to know everything about her,

her deepest secrets, you know, every recess.

Sally would drive from Houston in her red Fiero as

often as she could.

One time, she came on a T-38.

I watched this little mosquito jet come in and land.

[overlapping chatter]

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] We did have the long distance relationship.

And so we just had, you know,

weeks by ourselves just living our, our separate lives.

And then we get together and it was just so intense.

I took her to my lab at Georgia State University and

had her look through the microscope.

I was analyzing samples of different types of fungi.

They're actually fascinating.

Like penicillium, it looks like a tiny plant,

but it's microscopic.

I was down there alone with Sally in this little

cave of a lab.

I just felt like hugging and kissing Sally.

And so I start moving towards her and she, you know,

she's just worried that somebody might come in,

but I just couldn't help.

I just kept walking towards her and she's like backing up.

"Tam, don't. You know, come on. Come on."

You know, I'm like just going, going.

I love doing that to her.

I would do that in elevators.

If we were swimming in the ocean,

I'd dive under and grab her feet or something.

I just love, kind of, making her feel uncomfortable,

but in a fun way.

It was a pleasure.

My birthday is January 27th.

So Sally had flown to Atlanta for a long weekend

for us to be together.

And she was flying home on January 28th back to Houston.

[Sally Ride] I was on a commercial airliner.

The pilot made an announcement to the passengers

saying that there had been an accident.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Sally went up to the pilots cabin and

asked if she could come in to listen to the news.

- Five, four, three, two, one.

[controller] And lift off.

Lift off of the 25th Space Shuttle mission and it has

cleared the tower.

- This is Challenger, roll program.

- Roger Roll, Challenger.

Challenger, go and throttle up.

Roger, going throttle up.

Flight, JC. We've had, uh, negative conduct, lost filming.

- Flight, FIDO. - Go ahead.

- RSL reports vehicle exploded.

This is Mission Control Houston.

We have no additional word at this time.

[Mike Mullane] As soon as I saw it, I knew the crew was lost.

Judy was sitting in the center seat between the pilot and

the co-pilot.

Sally also sat in the center seat on her flight.

[reporter] 36-year-old mission specialist,

Judy Resnik, was a shuttle veteran,

her assignment to operate the shuttle's mechanical arm.

[Sally Ride] These were people I'd known for eight years.

I'd worked with them every day.

I'd, you know, gone to dinner at their houses,

so they were very, very close friends.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Sally was heartbroken.

She was just, just white as a sheet in the face and just sad.

And Judy was a big part of that reason.

- And it was especially tragic to later find out

there had been a long history of near misses.

[reporter] The special panel named by President Reagan to

investigate last week's Space Shuttle disaster began its work

in Washington today.

- The 12-member panel includes Neil Armstrong,

the first man on the moon, and Sally Ride,

the first American woman in space.

[Judge] Commission, come to order, please.

[clerk] Are you ready?

Do you swear the testimony that you shall give

to be the truth, the whole truth,

and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

- I do.

[Sally Ride] Have you had a chance to go back and

look at the quality assurance records and verify that, uh,

that those were signed off properly and appropriately?

- That is in process.

That is in process now.

[Sally Ride] It was a very, very difficult time.

I was just going from day to day and just grinding through

all the stuff that we had to grind through.

The engineers' main problem was they didn't have

the proof that it was safe.

- No. - Did you think you had the

database to show that it was safe...

- No. - In those temperatures?

- Well, all, all I did was recite the, uh,

data that we had, uh, available to us.

- That's what Dr. Ride is pointing out.

They say it's not conclusive.

They don't say, "We think it's safe."

They say the data is not conclusive.

And you say the, the data is conclusive to you.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Sally asked the tough questions and

just held NASA leadership, you know, to the fire.

And then an engineer at NASA passing in the hall handed

Sally the data sheet that showed NASA knew the rubber

O-rings were only resilient above temperatures

of 50 degrees and Challenger launched

at 36 degrees.

And NASA tried to hide the fact that they knew.

[Sally Ride] Do you think that there should be a launch commit

criteria on the seals or on the joint...

- I don't have.

- ...as far as temperature goes?

- I would prefer to reserve judgment on that until we, uh,

determine whether there should be or not.

I have not.

[Sally Ride] I guess that's my point.

There, there wasn't one,

but it doesn't appear as though you have data to

know whether there should be one or not,

and if there should be one, what it should be?

- Uh, that is a correct statement.

[Sally Ride] Astronauts have a real trust and faith

in NASA to minimize the risks of flying in space.

And it became very clear that that system really had failed.

[reporter] Sally Ride spoke out for the first time on her

personal reaction to the accident that has

halted space flight.

- I was disturbed.

I am not ready to fly again now.

Um, I think that there are very few astronauts

who are ready to fly again now.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] It broke Sally's heart because

NASA wasn't quite what she thought it was.

[Lynn Sherr] That was the beginning of the end for her.

[reporter] Today, the first American woman in space has

resigned from the space agency.

She says NASA's shortcomings became "starkly" apparent after

last year's Challenger disaster.

[anchor] And this announcement comes just a few weeks after

Ride and her husband,

astronaut Steve Hawley, were divorced.

[Steve Hawley] When she told me she didn't wanna

be married anymore,

it was an odd combination of surprise and

a bit of relief.

I'm not sure how long I would have been able to continue, um,

in the kind of relationship we had.

Sally, she didn't wanna be with NASA anymore and

I did wanna be with NASA.

So I initially thought, "Okay.

Well, this is because we don't have a common future anymore."

But, of course, I learned later it was more than that.

At some point, Bear's husband called me.

He was dealing with the fact that Bear was gay and

he wanted to know if I knew that Sally was gay.

I suspected, but I didn't know.

And I think it was his phone call that said,

"Okay. Yeah, I guess it's true."

And I still didn't know at that point, you know,

how long it had been going on.

Sally knew what she wanted and she would try to get it

or do it.

The rules, you know, might be an inconvenience,

but we're not, we're not that deterrent.

And that was just the way she was.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] After NASA, Sally and I wanted to be

together, but Sally wanted to look for a university position

and UCSD offered her a great package.

At that time, I was getting ready to start a

PhD program in Atlanta.

We just decided to live through a few more years,

hopefully only three, of long distance.

But a few weeks later, Sally called me and just said,

"I can't do long distance anymore.

I wanna live with you full-time."

I had to think about it.

I was very excited about my PhD program,

but I also was very excited about Sally.

So I moved into Sally's townhouse in La Jolla.

It was huge to actually start living together.

Just every day waking up together and going hiking in

the hills, we just had so much fun.

Somehow, our relationship felt smooth through

these big moments.

Sally and I both loved science, but girls were,

and still are today, less encouraged to become scientists

and engineers.

We just thought if more little girls grew up with an interest

in science like we did, the world would be a better place.

So we started the company, Sally Ride Science, in 2001.

We wanted to shift the culture about women and girls in STEM.

- We're trying to create programs, activities,

competitions to capture their enthusiasm.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Sally wanted to do everything

in her power to make it successful.

She became much more open to talk to more people,

talk to kids.

Sally Ride Science was hugely successful and we

had big sponsorships.

- I need to start by thanking ExxonMobil.

- But Sally was worried about how open to be

about our relationship.

If the sponsors knew that two women were running the company

and the two women were lesbos, you know,

she worried that might ruin our company.

People leak information and it just happens.

Stuff gets out there.

Sally was very cautious of the press for that reason.

- I started, uh, Sally Ride Science about eight

years ago with, uh, with Karen and Tam, as you heard.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] When she was married to Steve,

she would be seen kissing him and holding his hand in public.

Those were things that she did not feel comfortable

with doing with me.

You have to hold yourself back when you're with somebody that

you love dearly.

And you wanna sit right next to 'em.

You wanna hold their hand.

You wanna touch their face.

You wanna kiss them.

It's the fear factor of being gay, being who you are,

affect your work, your opportunities, our company.

So, the world is not always kind.

Sally was afraid of what people would think,

especially her colleagues, her friends,

how that would change how they thought about her.

But I wanted them to know we were a couple.

I didn't wanna have that awkward feeling.

I wanted the relationship validated.

Being secret about our love for each other and

our life together,

it took more of a toll on me than Sally.

It just ate at me.

I love these pictures.

Uh, my good friend took these just really sweet

pictures of Sally and I.

- You know, a lot of couples when they first started dating,

they have like a lot of pictures that they take of each

other during that time.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] Yeah. We never did that.

I mean, I wish I had more pictures of all these great

moments in our, our lives.

When I was in my early 20s, um, throughout my 20s,

I was more open than I was with Sally.

I was always open and honest with my closest friends,

my family.

And there was like this little hole in me where I

didn't like having to kind of cover that part of

who I was.

That just crushed me.

It broke my heart. I shut down.

I loved her to death, but for a few months,

I seriously thought about leaving Sally.

I took a trip to Atlanta to just kind of get away.

And I thought really hard about having another life.

What I'd do, how it would be to not be around Sally.

I'd call her every day and she just would not talk very much.

She was just, like, shut down.

It was horrible.

That was the lowest point.

Many people just don't understand what it means to

fall in love with a person like Sally.

Some of the very characteristics that made her

the woman who could break the highest glass ceiling

made her tough to be in a relationship with.

Sally couldn't share with the people closest to her,

even her sister, Bear.

Here's Bear, Sally's sister, who's two years younger.

- Sally and Tam had been living together for

a long time, and one could assume.

We had family holiday meals, and Sally and Tam would come

over and have baked a pie.

But Sally just never talked about it.

I was a Presbyterian minister,

as was my wife,

and we came out when we got together.

But as a result of coming out,

Susan and I both lost our jobs in the church.

- Bear wanted to talk to Sally about Susan and

also wanted to talk to Sally about Sally and me.

And so Sally said,

"Tam, will you please talk to Bear?"

I was like, "Why don't you talk to your sister?

You're with a woman.

She's with a woman.

Talk to her. She's your sister."

I didn't understand that. I didn't get it.

When I came back from my trip,

Sally said that she needed to talk to me.

She said that she was worried about our relationship,

that things were changing, and it scared her.

It hit her in her heart.

She didn't want us to end up spending most of our time in

separate rooms, doing separate things.

We were having an intense conversation.

We weren't fighting,

it wasn't, but it was a little bit of a debate.

And she was standing with flat foot,

and suddenly she just rises up on her toes,

and it just cracked me up and I just started laughing.

I just couldn't, it's so cute and so different.

I just realized that I love Sally,

and maybe there's a way to work this out.

Sally told me that she always wanted me to be happy,

and we just ended up agreeing that we needed to find a better

balance between what I needed and what she needed.

We couldn't change the way the world saw us,

but we love each other so much,

and we wanted to be together through hell or high water.

We were happy together for many, many years.

And then in 2011, Sally and I were going to San Francisco

for a conference.

We were at a hotel, and Sally didn't want any dinner.

She, she said she didn't feel well,

and I noticed that her cheeks were slightly yellow.

That just scared the willies out of me.

So as soon as Sally and I got back,

we took a car straight to the doctor's office.

And I'm just thinking, "She's sick, but not serious."

But then I see her walking out of the doctor's office,

and her face,

I just knew something was really bad wrong.

And, oh, boy.

And you know, I said, "What, what did he say?"

And she said, "He thinks I have cancer.

Pancreatic cancer.

There's a tumor in my pancreas."

In, in one second, our life is totally changed.

We were like zombies.

It was just such a shock.

She had extensive surgery, chemo, and radiation.

[Bear Ride] But she always remained optimistic.

She was always Sally.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] As the cancer progressed,

she got sicker and sicker.

Every week, she'd lose something,

the ability to go up and down the stairs.

- Tam was amazing during that time with Sally,

as committed as could be.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] I loved Neil Young and that song,

"Harvest Moon."

I would put that on sometime and make,

make Sally dance slow with me in the living room.

And it was just, you know, and she, she was,

had lost weight and she was weak.

♪ Come a little bit closer. ♪

♪ Hear what I have to say. ♪

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] She looked very cute.

Her blue eyes are still fierce.

♪ Just like children sleeping. ♪

♪ We could dream this night away. ♪

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] It was just wonderful to be with her.

♪ Because I'm still in love with you. ♪

♪ I wanna see you dance again. ♪

♪ Because I'm still in love with you ♪

♪ On this harvest moon. ♪

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] We both just wanted to be as close

as we could.

We would be locking arms going into the hospital.

The nurse would ask me, "Who are you?"

And Sally started saying, "She's my partner."

And it was just like, just came out of her mouth.

Hospitals used to tell you that if you're not

a family member, you can't see the patient.

And Sally was very worried about that.

We wished that we'd taken the opportunity to get married,

but we decided then to file to be certified domestic partners.

It felt almost as close as being married.

It just, it was really fun to see both our signatures on that

little stupid piece of paper.

Oh, man, that brought back.

Sally died in July 2012,

17 months after the diagnosis.

It was a wild day.

I couldn't handle the coroner, so I asked Bear, you know,

we just, I don't, I don't wanna watch her being wheeled away.

I went outside and just sat on our patio and suddenly,

I hear a helicopter circling right over our house.

Cars were pulling up.

Then there was a cameraman hanging out with

a big old camera.

[anchor] We bid a sad farewell.

- A true American pioneer died today.

- Trailblazing astronaut, Sally Ride,

has lost her battle with pancreatic cancer.

She was 61 years old.

- Ride was a very private person.

It wasn't until reading her obituary today that it became

public news that Ride had had a 27-year-long relationship

with a female partner.

[Lynn Sherr] I found out about Tam the same way the

rest of the world did, in the obituary.

Oh, I was furious at her.

I was furious. How dare she not tell me?

And then I felt really bad.

I felt bad that society could make someone that we admire and

love and respect feel that she had to hide

something about herself.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] About a month before she passed away,

it was just clear that the end was near.

We never talked about death, funeral,

we never used those words.

But then I thought, "Wait a second.

Who am I gonna be to the world?

Who am I going to be to the people that don't know

that we've been together and we love each other?"

She just kind of thought about it, and she said,

"You decide. Whatever you decide will be fine."

So when I wrote the obituary, I just thought, "You know what?

Sally was an honest person, except for this little thin

area and it's just not right."

And I'm an honest person, so I, I'm just sick of hiding.

I'm just gonna be myself.

If somebody doesn't like it, tough.

- It was really a liberation for all of us.

Tam should be recognized for who she was in relation

to Sally as well as in relation to our family.

- I am going to read an unbelievable letter that

I received from Mike Mullane.

"I know this is belated, but I wanted to extend my

heartfelt sympathy for your loss.

I came to the astronaut office having been immersed

in all male environments my entire life.

My early behavior and word and deed alienated

Sally from me."

[Mike Mullane] When we got to NASA, day one at NASA,

if you would have looked in the dictionary

under male sexist pig, you would have saw

Mike Mullane's picture in there.

I'm, I'm ashamed, really, of what, my attitude.

- "Sally was a remarkable woman

and faced enormous obstacles with courage and dignity.

I have four granddaughters.

I want them to have an appreciation for the sacrifices

women like Sally and each of you made to secure a future in

which they won't be constrained in pursuing their own dreams."

That's, this is an amazing letter.

[Mike Mullane] Here I was doubting the women's ability

to handle these dangerous situations.

Working with them opened my eyes.

They can do the job as well as anybody else,

and these six women proved it.

And Sally was part of it.

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

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

[Billie Jean King] Space for the United States changed

for all time when Sally went up.

Women can do this. She proved it. Done.

[Kathy Sullivan] She was breaking trail for all of the

women who've flown in space after her and she

did it superbly.

♪ There is no fear. ♪

♪ We're out here and my eyes are clear and bright. ♪

♪ There is no time, ♪

♪ No straight line, not one in sight. ♪

[Kathy Sullivan] You can see Sally's legacy in the many

women who are now a part of all facets of NASA's work.

All the younger women and women in science that she touched,

she inspired.

It heightens the likelihood that they'll try harder,

go further, contribute more.

[Sally Ride] I'd like to be remembered as someone who was

not afraid to do what she wanted to do and as someone who

took risks along the way in order to achieve her goals.

♪ But I'll return again ♪

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] I have thought long and hard about why

Sally couldn't be open about our relationship,

and the only thing that makes sense to me is that

she was afraid.

That's heartbreaking for me, but also for her.

[Bear Ride] All the people that think Sally should have come

out before she died or Sally should have just graciously

accepted the bouquet of flowers at her landing,

just let Sally be Sally.

That's what made Sally who she was.

♪ If I showed it, I'd lose it, didn't think I had a choice ♪

- She left us with a question,

she left us with some curiosity,

but she left us on her terms,

and that's the way Sally always liked it.

[President Obama] Good morning. Good morning, everybody.

[Tam O’Shaughnessy] I got a phone call from the White House.

They said that Sally was gonna, uh,

receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

[President Obama] As the first American woman in space,

Sally didn't just break the stratospheric glass ceiling,

she blasted through it.

[reporter] Tam O'Shaughnessy

accepting on behalf of her life partner,

Dr. Sally K. Ride.

[applause]

- Talk about a public coming out,

I mean, that was, uh, big.

[applause]

It just felt unbelievable.

Finally, Sally was celebrated for who she really was,

and I got celebrated as well for being her partner.

The world made it tricky and painful,

but we were brave enough to love each other.

[♪ orchestral music playing]

[♪ orchestral music playing]

[♪ orchestral music playing]