Had Sally Ride not died of pancreatic cancer in 2012, she would have been 64 today. She was of course the first American woman in space, having had two trips on the space shuttle Challenger at the age of 32. As the video at the bottom notes, she was chosen from 8,000 candidates.
The Doodle changes randomly each time you reload it (there are five of them), so you may want to click on the screenshot below, which takes you to the Doodle page, more than once.
The last time I posted about her I was taken to task by a reader for not mentioning that she was gay. Well, she was, and I knew that, but since she chose to not make a big deal about it, neither did I. The time will come when it won’t be necessary, when celebrating someone’s accomplishments, to mention their race, gender, or sexual orientation, and when those accomplishments won’t even involve such things. But for the meantime, she died way too young, in the middle of trying, through her foundation, to get more young people involved in science.
Here’s a video by the Doodle’s artist, Olivia Huynh, explaining how she made it:
And Sally riding the space shuttle:
I remember her first flight. Ride, Sally Ride.
Dear Prof Ceiling Cat – I must say that I am shocked, shocked I tell you. How can you expect anyone to evaluate the accomplishments of a person and the worth of their contributions on such limited information? Seriously, information about whether Ms. Ride was right handed or left handed is essential and like totally relevant.
Or not. 🙂
Not too many years from now people will mock our generation as ignorant fools. And I can’t wait.
Thanks for posting “the making of” this doodle. It is wonderful!
Sally Ride provided crucial information to Richard Feynman about the O-rings on Challenger, despite the attempts to cover up the problem. A good person.
Yep, safety-conscious scientists, engineers and specialist technicians trying to call attention to the problem – PRE-LAUNCH – Morton-Thiokol and other MBA/JD senior management and politico types trying to suppress pre-launch concerns and post-launch inquiry.
If pre-launch safety concerns could have somehow come to the attention of Ronald Reagan, would he have had the cognitive wherewithal and courage to delay launch and order a safety stand-down/investigation?
I am ashamed to admit that, prior to her passing, I had never heard of her. and before I get the hate mail from the Jezebel readers (JK!) it wasn’t because she was a she, but because of how little we seem to value NASA these days. I didn’t even realize, until yesterday driving back from Dallas, that Missouri has at least 3 former astronauts, including Janet L. Kavandi from Carthage, Mo (I was driving through and saw the plaque). I never saw a shuttle launch live or even on video in school, it was too passe´by the mid 80’s I guess, and I didn’t know any astronauts other than Armstrong, Aldrin, and Grissom. Pathetic that we’ve allowed space to become, not the final frontier, but something that doesn’t even make the evening news (baring accidents of course, when the politicos line up to argue how much we need to cut the budget). We often hear about how “people of color” or women are not encouraged to become scientists because “we” don’t show them role models in their appropriate color or gender. I question that. We don’t show scientists. Period. Athletes, check! Musicians, check!, Actors, check! Actors playing stereotypical mad scientists/odd ball eccentric loners, double check! But any glamour from the Space Age 1960’s or Einstein (the only scientist most people have ever heard of) has long tarnished. Maybe deGrasse Tyson can help. At least he’s become famous enough to be an internet meme, but that’s probably all he is or ever will be to most people. Face, meet Palm. Repeat as necessary.
When I was a kid, in the early to mid-60s, astronauts were as well known as baseball players. I remember there was a brand of potato chips that had badges with astronauts’ pictures in each bag, and bottles of soda had pictures of the astronauts on the underside of the bottle cap. We collected them like baseball cards.
By the time of Skylab, the fascination had worn off. My father came home from work and said, “We were talking about Skylab, and none of us could name any of the astronauts up there.” My mother said, “It’s no big deal anymore. It’s like a plane taking off.”
Everyone wanted to beat the Russians to the Moon, and once that goal was reached, the public lost interest.
I do think there was that extra Cold War competitive push behind the space program, which is sad in a way. Lots of people have reminisced about the good ol’ days when we as a nation were investing in the future of science, but I guess a lot of that investment was in the science of military defense. Still is to a point I guess, NASA and the Air Force are forever joined at the hip, but that certainly kept the cash flowing and science benefited from humanity’s attempts to annihilate one another. I mean, look at all the early launches, on rockets that resembled military weapons, versus your mothers “planes”, which was essentially what the shuttle was, after it launched anyway. Science doesn’t have the same pull, lacks the “rally ’round the flag” aspect of military competition, nationalism, or nuclear warfare. I’ve no doubt that by the 1990-2000’s,most people said “NASA is wasting MY TAX DOLLARS to study spiders’ web spinning in space? #*$@ Scientists! What a waste of time and money!” and then went back to watching Jersey shore or whatever it was.
” . . . it was too passe´by the mid 80’s I guess . . . .”
Well, Who dictates to us (Whom do any one of us allow to dictate to us) what is “passé” in terms of what is worth knowing and being enthusiastic about? The U.S. pop culture seems (to me) to more and more pervasively manifest a tawdry, shallow, banal middle school mindset.
I saw a posting somewhere by a young adult who – reflecting on his schooling, said, “My teacher should have made me (fill in the blank – study harder, be more interested in things outside my immediate vicinity/experience, etc.). Why didn’t he MAKE HIMSELF do whatever it was, and especially now in the age of the Internet? I guess there are still a few who think one can learn anything only inside a school building.
One can easily watch on Youtube Apollo 15’s Dave Scott, on the moon, comparing the velocities/acceleration of a hammer and falcon feather, as he lets them simultaneously drop to the surface. That was broadcast live in ’71.
FURTHER THE AFFIANT SAITH NOT.
Cheers!
Sometimes it takes a chance encounter to make all the difference. I didn’t have mine with space stuff until much later. My point was just that schools are a good place for kids to get exposed to other ideas that they might be missing at home, not to mention where they should be getting some exposure to possible college or career ideas (not that I’d ever have been an astronaut) but by my generation we as a nation, not just in school, but everywhere, had gotten used to the space shuttle, like we had with every day passenger jet travel. But space travel and exploration is so much more than a quick trip to Vegas! I don’t know who decides what is “In” vs “Out” but sports, music, and tv are perpetually “In”, and I don’t see much to recommend the next Kardashian, Beiber, or A-Rod. I don’t expect teachers to “make” any kid learn anything (I’m actually finishing a Master of Arts in Teaching) but any good teacher ought to be exposing them to the things that are happening in the world in their field, be it following elections if you teach Am. Government, or showing recent launches if you teach science. It’s just good teaching, to make things relevant, current. It didn’t happen much in my school, and I suspect it doesn’t happen much in others either.
Being a first sure has its downside, according to this VOX article which reports that NASA thought Sally Ride would need 100 tampons for one week in space. LOL! It sounds like a poe yet I can really imagine NASA doing this.
I wonder if Valentina Tereshkova of Russia or Roberta Bondar of Canada had the same problems.
I trust that the media will not presume upon Signorina Cristoforetti’s good graces in this regard.
Sally Ride was a modern day hero. I sincerely hope we can keep her memory alive to help inspire young people of any and all persuasions to pursue a career in the sciences.
IICR, Obama’s encouragement has consisted mainly of encouraging young’uns to go into STEM so as to create new products and services and bolster and grow the Amuricun economy. Little regard for the numinous and intellectual discovery and acheivement.
Perhaps the current college graduate generation is a little less inclined to be STEM hand maidens to the MBA/JD Wall Street Investor types, who themselves have no less a “patriotic” duty (which they wish to impose on others) to enter STEM fields.