4. She was a lesbian with a committed partner of 27 years. Can we edit this in the future? This should be jarring to someone who reads it years hence as being a weird thing for me to note. To say nothing here, at all, and that in her obituary she left her wife of 27 years behind as a survivor? Because Sally Ride, first American woman in space, is the tagline for her obituary, which in 1983 was a huge freaking deal because of where we were, so wretchedly, in 1983. But I want to point out the issue in 2012 is that Ride died with a loving wife, and because of the lack of legal recognition, she won't have the simple line in her obituary that "legally married" Americans have. Maybe she didn't want to get married, I don't know. A hundred years from now maybe she'll be forgotten for "both" "achievements" (was she the first gay person in space? I don't know), but you know what, in 2012, I say, this is what an Astronaut-hero is. And you're going to tell me her survivor couldn't be buried next to her in Arlington (if that's what she had chosen for burial, at least)? Is this how America treats its heroes? Well, it's how it treats everybody who's gay. You could cure cancer, balance the federal budget, save Lassie from a burning building, and defeat Voldemort and in America in 2012, if you happen to be a lesbian, that won't get you a marriage license if you want one. It won't get your spouse survivors' benefits and it won't get them the simple recognition as a widow.
3. She was a Steely-Eyed Missile Man. This was the phrase they used in the 1960s, during the most macho and testosterone-fueled era of astronautics, to describe somebody who could solve complex and demanding problems under pressure. Its obvious phallic overtones had their origins in the test pilot program, but were extended to the technicians and engineers who worked problems on the launch pad. Ride was famous, famous for being cool under pressure in training and in space, notably while controlling the centerpiece robotic arm in the shuttle. Was she ever called a Steely-Eyed Missile Man? Well, I'm calling her one. She was a damned good engineer by all accounts.
2. She believed Roger Boisjoly. She ranks up there with Richard Feynman for unraveling the engineering side of the story, all too obvious in its origins of groupthink and "go fever", of the Challenger disaster in 1986. Boisjoly was, like most whistleblowers, ostracized instead of lauded for truth-telling. I don't know whether Ride had a special position of security that allowed her to publicly support Boisjoly at a time when he was being scapegoated, or was perhaps even more vulnerable because of lingering sexism, or because of her sexual identity, but either way it still took a lot of courage to speak truth to power in that atmosphere.
1. She did not sell herself; she was not full of herself. In a society full of self-promotion and hype, and at a time when NASA is all about constant public relations to try to keep the human flight program prominent, she didn't yap. She might have been a booster of NASA, to be sure, but she was not a self-booster. She didn't take endorsements. She didn't make a big deal out of herself, even though she was, yes, a big deal. You can make the argument she was just a private person, or she didn't, with good reason, want her private life on a pedestal, or she was just an engineer at heart. Maybe the Gary Cooper attitude was a myth, and we've always been a nation of hucksters, but I prefer my heroes to be humans, not cardboard cutouts.
