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=== Early life ===
=== Early life ===


The elder child of Dale Burdell Ride and Carol Joyce ([[married and maiden names|née]] Anderson), Sally was born in [[Encino, Los Angeles, California]]. Of [[Norwegian people|Norwegian]] ancestry, she had one sibling, Karen "Bear" Ride, who is a [[Presbyterian]] minister. Both parents were elders in the Presbyterian Church. Ride's mother had worked as a volunteer counselor at a women’s correctional facility. Her father had been a political science professor at Santa Monica College.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/science/space/sally-ride-trailblazing-astronaut-dies-at-61.html?_r=2&pagewanted=2&hp NY Times Ride Obit, p. 2.]</ref>
The elder child of Dale Burdell Ride and Carol Joyce ([[married and maiden names|née]] Anderson), Sally was born in [[Encino, Los Angeles|Encino, Los Angeles, California]]. Of [[Norwegian people|Norwegian]] ancestry, she had one sibling, Karen "Bear" Ride, who is a [[Presbyterian]] minister. Both parents were elders in the Presbyterian Church. Ride's mother had worked as a volunteer counselor at a women’s correctional facility. Her father had been a political science professor at Santa Monica College.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/science/space/sally-ride-trailblazing-astronaut-dies-at-61.html?_r=2&pagewanted=2&hp NY Times Ride Obit, p. 2.]</ref>


She attended [[Portola Middle School (Tarzana)|Portola Middle School]] and [[Westlake School for Girls]] in Los Angeles (now [[Harvard-Westlake School]]) on a scholarship. In addition to being interested in science, she was a nationally ranked tennis player. Ride attended [[Swarthmore College]] for three semesters, took physics courses at [[UCLA]], and then entered [[Stanford University]] as a junior, graduating with a [[bachelor's degree]] in [[English studies|English]] and [[physics]]. At Stanford, she earned a [[master's degree]] and a [[Doctor of Philosophy|Ph.D.]] in physics, while doing research in [[astrophysics]] and [[free electron laser]] physics.<ref name="ride1">{{cite web|url=http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/ride-sk.html|title=Sally K. Ride, Ph.D Biography|accessdate=October 4, 2007|publisher=NASA|year=2006|author=NASA}}</ref>
She attended [[Portola Middle School (Tarzana)|Portola Middle School]] and [[Westlake School for Girls]] in Los Angeles (now [[Harvard-Westlake School]]) on a scholarship. In addition to being interested in science, she was a nationally ranked tennis player. Ride attended [[Swarthmore College]] for three semesters, took physics courses at [[UCLA]], and then entered [[Stanford University]] as a junior, graduating with a [[bachelor's degree]] in [[English studies|English]] and [[physics]]. At Stanford, she earned a [[master's degree]] and a [[Doctor of Philosophy|Ph.D.]] in physics, while doing research in [[astrophysics]] and [[free electron laser]] physics.<ref name="ride1">{{cite web|url=http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/ride-sk.html|title=Sally K. Ride, Ph.D Biography|accessdate=October 4, 2007|publisher=NASA|year=2006|author=NASA}}</ref>

Revision as of 13:53, 25 July 2012

Sally Ride
Ride in 1984
Born
Sally Kristen Ride

(1951-05-26)May 26, 1951
Encino, California, U.S.
DiedJuly 23, 2012(2012-07-23) (aged 61)
La Jolla, California, U.S.
Cause of deathPancreatic cancer
NationalityAmerican
Education
  • BS Physics / BA English – Stanford University
  • MS Physics – Stanford University
  • Ph.D. Physics – Stanford University
OccupationPhysicist
Spouse(s)Steven Hawley
(m. 1982–1987; divorced)
Partner(s)Tam O'Shaughnessy
(1985–2012; Ride's death)
Parents
  • Dale Burdell Ride
  • Carol Joyce (née Anderson)
RelativesKaren "Bear" Ride (sister)
Statusdeceased
Space career
NASA astronaut
Time in space
14d 07h 46m
Selection1978 NASA Group
MissionsSTS-7, STS-41-G
Mission insignia
RetirementAugust 15, 1987

Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American physicist and astronaut.

Ride joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman to enter space.[1] As of 2012, Ride also remains the youngest American astronaut to be launched into space at the age of 32.[2] In 1987, she left NASA to work at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Ride served on the investigation panels for two space shuttle accidents (the Challenger accident and the Columbia accident),[3] the only person to serve on both.

Life and career

Early life

The elder child of Dale Burdell Ride and Carol Joyce (née Anderson), Sally was born in Encino, Los Angeles, California. Of Norwegian ancestry, she had one sibling, Karen "Bear" Ride, who is a Presbyterian minister. Both parents were elders in the Presbyterian Church. Ride's mother had worked as a volunteer counselor at a women’s correctional facility. Her father had been a political science professor at Santa Monica College.[4]

She attended Portola Middle School and Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles (now Harvard-Westlake School) on a scholarship. In addition to being interested in science, she was a nationally ranked tennis player. Ride attended Swarthmore College for three semesters, took physics courses at UCLA, and then entered Stanford University as a junior, graduating with a bachelor's degree in English and physics. At Stanford, she earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. in physics, while doing research in astrophysics and free electron laser physics.[5]

NASA career

Sally Ride on Challenger's mid-deck during STS-7, 1983

Ride was one of 8,000 people to answer an advertisement in a newspaper seeking applicants for the space program.[6] As a result, she joined NASA in 1978. Prior to her first space flight, she was subject to media attention,[7] even being asked during a press conference "Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?".[7]

During her career, Ride served as the ground-based capsule communicator (CapCom) for the second and third Space Shuttle flights (STS-2 and STS-3) and helped develop the Space Shuttle's robot arm. On June 18, 1983, she became the first American woman in space as a crew member on Space Shuttle Challenger for STS-7. (She was preceded by two Soviet women, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982.) On STS-7, during which the five-person crew deployed two communications satellites and conducted pharmaceutical experiments, Ride was the first woman to use the robot arm in space and the first to use the arm to retrieve a satellite.

Her second space flight was in 1984, also on board the Challenger. She spent a total of more than 343 hours in space. Ride, who had completed eight months of training for her third flight when the Space Shuttle Challenger accident occurred, was named to the Rogers Commission Report (the presidential commission investigating the accident) and headed its subcommittee on operations. Following the investigation, Ride was assigned to NASA headquarters in Washington, DC, where she led NASA's first strategic planning effort, authored a report entitled "Leadership and America's Future in Space", and founded NASA's Office of Exploration.[5]

After NASA

In 1987, Ride left her position in Washington, D.C., to work at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Arms Control. In 1989, she became a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, and Director of the California Space Institute. During the mid 1990s until her death, Ride led the public outreach efforts of the ISS EarthKAM and GRAIL MoonKAM projects in cooperation with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and UCSD, which permitted middle school students to study imagery of the Earth[8] and moon.[9] In 2003, she was asked to serve on the Space Shuttle Columbia Accident Investigation Board. She was the president and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company she founded in 2001 that creates entertaining science programs and publications for upper elementary and middle school students, with a particular focus on girls.[10][11]

According to Roger Boisjoly, the engineer who warned of the technical problems that led to the Challenger accident, Ride was the only public figure to show support for him when he went public with his pre-disaster warnings (after the entire workforce of Morton-Thiokol shunned him). Sally Ride hugged him publicly to show her support for his efforts.[12]

Ride wrote or co-wrote five books on space aimed at children, with the goal of encouraging children to study science.[13][14]

Ride endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008.[15] She was a member of the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee, an independent review requested by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on May 7, 2009.

Personal life, and death

Ride was extremely private about her personal life. She married fellow NASA astronaut Steve Hawley in 1982; they divorced in 1987.[16]

Ride died at 61 on July 23, 2012, after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer.[17][18][19][20] After death, her obituary revealed that Ride's partner was Tam E. O'Shaughnessy, a female professor emerita of school psychology at San Diego State University and a childhood friend who met Ride when both were aspiring tennis players.[21][22][23][24] O'Shaughnessy became a science teacher and writer and, later, the chief operating officer and executive vice president of Ride's company, Sally Ride Science.[25][26] She co-authored several books with Ride. Their 27-year relationship was revealed by the company and confirmed by Ride's sister who also stated that Ride chose to keep her personal life private, including her sickness and treatments.[21][23] Ride is thus the first person to have been in space whose same-sex relationship was publicly acknowledged.[27][28][29]

Awards and honors

Sally Ride communicates with ground controllers from the flight deck during the six day mission in Challenger, 1983.

Ride received numerous awards, including the National Space Society's von Braun Award, the Lindbergh Eagle, and the NCAA's Theodore Roosevelt Award. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame and was awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal twice. Ride was the only person to serve on both of the panels investigating shuttle accidents (those for the Challenger accident and the Columbia disaster). Two elementary schools in the United States are named after her: Sally K. Ride Elementary School in The Woodlands, Texas, and Sally K. Ride Elementary School in Germantown, Maryland.[5]

On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Ride into the California Hall of Fame, located at the California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.[30]

Her name is mentioned in Billy Joel's 1989 hit song "We Didn't Start the Fire".

Two songs written years before Ride joined the astronaut corps, 1965's "Mustang Sally" with its lyric "ride Sally, ride", and Lou Reed's 1974 "Ride Sally Ride", also became associated with her. In an interview, Ride said of "Mustang Sally" in particular, "That one has been following me through my entire life, it seems."[31]

Bibliography

  • Ride, Sally. Single Room, Earth View (expository essay). Sally Ride.
  • Ride, Sally; Okie, Susan (1989). To Space and Back. New York: HarperTrophy. pp. 96 pages. ISBN 0-688-09112-1. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Ride, Sally; O'Shaughnessy, Tam E.; (1999). The Mystery of Mars. [New York]: Crown. pp. 48 pages. ISBN 0-517-70971-6. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Ride, Sally; O'Shaughnessy, Tam E. (2003). Exploring our Solar System. New York: Crown Publishers. pp. 112 pages. ISBN 0-375-81204-0. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Ride, Sally; O'Shaughnessy, Tam E. (2004). The Third Planet: Exploring the Earth from Space. Sally Ride Science. pp. 48 pages. ISBN 0-9753920-0-X. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Sally Ride Science (2004). What Do You Want to Be? Explore Space Sciences. Sally Ride Science. pp. 32 pages. ISBN 0-9753920-1-8. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  • Ride, Sally (2005). Voyager: An Adventure to the Edge of the Solar System. Sally Ride Science. pp. 40 pages. ISBN 0-9753920-5-0. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  • Ride, Sally; Mike Goldsmith (2005). Space (Kingfisher Voyages). London: Kingfisher. pp. 60 pages. ISBN 0-7534-5910-8. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Ride, Sally; Tam O'Shaughnessy (2008: upcoming release). Climate Change: You Can Make A Difference. London: Roaring Brook Press. pp. 48 pages. ISBN 1-59643-379-5. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

See also

References

  1. ^ Morrison, Patt (July 24, 2012). "Sally Ride's spaceflight was one giant leap for womankind". Los Angeles Times, Opinion. Retrieved July 24, 2012.
  2. ^ "Kennedy Space Center FAQ". NASA/Kennedy Space Center External Relations and Business Development Directorate. Retrieved July 23, 2012.
  3. ^ NY Times Ride Obit
  4. ^ NY Times Ride Obit, p. 2.
  5. ^ a b c NASA (2006). "Sally K. Ride, Ph.D Biography". NASA. Retrieved October 4, 2007.
  6. ^ NASA. "Dr. Sally Ride". NASA. Retrieved October 7, 2007.
  7. ^ a b A Ride in Space – NASA, Sally Ride
  8. ^ "EarthKAM (Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students)". Sally Ride Science. Retrieved 2012-07-24.
  9. ^ "GRAIL MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students)". Sally Ride Science. Retrieved 2012-07-24.
  10. ^ Dan Majors (September 26, 2007). "Sally Ride touts science careers for women". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved October 7, 2007.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  11. ^ Kenneth Kesner (2007). "Sally Ride Festival geared for girls". The Huntsville Times. Retrieved October 7, 2007.
  12. ^ Roger Boisjoly, 73, Dies; Warned of Shuttle Danger, Douglas Martin, NY Times, February 3, 2012
  13. ^ "Sally Ride Science Brings Cutting-Edge Science to the Classroom with New Content Rich Classroom Sets" (Press release). Sally Ride Science. September 27, 2007. Retrieved October 7, 2007.
  14. ^ Allison M. Heinrichs (2007). "Sally Ride encourages girls to engineer careers". Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Retrieved October 7, 2007.
  15. ^ "Sally Ride endorses Obama". 2008. Retrieved June 27, 2010. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  16. ^ "People: June 8, 1987". Time. June 8, 1987. Retrieved October 1, 2001.
  17. ^ "Sally Ride, the first US woman in space, dies aged 61". BBC News Online. July 23, 2012. Retrieved July 24, 2012.
  18. ^ "Sally Ride, first American woman in space, dies". CNN. July 24, 2012. Retrieved July 24, 2012.
  19. ^ William Harwood (July 23, 2012). "Sally Ride, first American woman in space, dies at 61". CNET. Retrieved July 23, 2012.
  20. ^ Denise Grady (July 23, 2012). "American Woman Who Shattered Space Ceiling". The New York Times. Retrieved July 24, 2012.
  21. ^ a b Abdill, Rich (July 23, 2012). "Sally Ride Revealed to Be Gay: Her Sister, on Ride's Life, Death, and Desires for Privacy". Broward/Palm Beach News Blogs – The Pulp.
  22. ^ "Sally Ride, First American Woman In Space, Revealed To Have Female Partner Of 27 Years". HuffPo Gay Voices. July 23, 2012.
  23. ^ a b Adams Sheets, Connor (July 23, 2012). "Tam O'Shaughnessy: About Sally Ride's Partner Of 27 Years". International Business Times. Retrieved July 23, 2012.
  24. ^ Giorgis, Cyndi; Johnson, Nancy J. (March 1, 2009). "Talking with Sally Ride and Tam O'Shaughnessy". American Library Association. Sally Ride Science. Retrieved July 23, 2012.
  25. ^ "Sally Ride, Trailblazing Astronaut, Dies at 61" by Denise Grady, New York Times website, July 23, 2012. Retrieved July 23, 2012.
  26. ^ Tam O'Shaughnessy biography on the Sally Ride Science website. Retrieved July 23, 2012.
  27. ^ White, Madeleine (July 24, 2012). "Remembering Sally Ride: America's first woman (and lesbian) to fly in space". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved July 25, 2012.
  28. ^ Seltzer, Sarah (July 24, 2012). "R.I.P Sally Ride, First Woman (and Lesbian) In Space". AlterNet. Retrieved July 25, 2012.
  29. ^ "Sally Ride Was Also The First Lesbian In Space". Business Insider. July 24, 2012. Retrieved July 24, 2012.
  30. ^ The California Museum (2006). "Sally Ride". The California Museum. Retrieved May 27, 2009.
  31. ^ Todd Halvorson (June 18, 2008). ""Sally Ride Discusses Anniversary of Her Historic Trip to Space"". Florida Today. Retrieved 2012-07-24.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sally Ride.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Sally Ride.

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