"Sally was very good at keeping secrets."
The author is a journalist and was a friend of Sally Ride's, but not close enough to her to have learned of her big secrets of (a) dying of cancer, and (b) surprise, she's bi and has been with a lady for 27 years at the time of her death. After Sally's death, Lynn was asked to write her biography, which is a light, breezy story that goes into as much depth on Sally as one can do when Sally tended to be a closed-off person who tended to compartmentalize a lot. Sally grew up with a nice family, a sister dubbed "Bear" who turned out to be a minister and a lesbian, was really into tennis and physics, and obviously became an astronaut and was the first lady in space. The book covers Sally's ride to fame and how she handled it, and how she was involved in two space disaster investigations and the toll that took on her, and her transitioning to other work.
As for Sally's sexuality, it seems fairly clear she traveled the bi-way, having a college girlfriend for awhile while also dating guys, mostly in the space program, and sometimes it sounds like she had more or less enthusiasm for the dudes. She got married, she got over the idea of being married, and settled down with a longtime girlfriend, Tam. Sally pretty much kept her bi-ness to herself and both doesn't seem to have considered it to be A Big Deal, and at the same time it's pointed out that had she ever come out about her past or future relationship, it would have been very bad for her career. To date, she's the only "out" person who worked for NASA and that happened in her obituary. It sounds like not that many people were even aware of it, or of her cancer when she got diagnosed with it either. Sally being a naturally closed-ish personality seems to have worked out for her, but probably made it a bit hard to write about Sally's inner life when that was hard for others to know and she left pretty short journal entries.
Notable facts:
- When six women and some men of color were added to the AsCan program in 1978, the 25 white men also admitted into their class were pretty much ignored. "I could have mooned the press corps and I would not have been noticed," grumbled Mike Mullane. Another classmate, Kathy Sullivan, referred to their class as producing "ten interesting people and twenty-five standard white guys."
- NASA people say "interesting" when something goes rocky or is indescribable.
- Rhea Seddon: "We had to answer some dumb engineering questions. Like, "What if all the mucous that women put out will stop up the toilet?" And we're all sitting there looking at this highly placed engineer who'd been there forever, and we're saying, "What mucous?"
- The anecdote about how Sally was provided with 100 tampons is definitely in this one, as is Sally's "you have got to be kidding me" look. "There just seemed to be this endless unfurling of Lord only knows how many tampons." When asked how many to include, Sally suggested about half that number. Fun fact: Sally was jogging 25 miles a day and that stopped her periods, so it didn't come up for her. The author reports that the anonymous first woman who actually menstruated in space noted that she also needed a pad, and later NASA let women figure it out for themselves as to what they needed.
- At one point Sally was handed flowers ,which she handed back so she could have her hands free. "Bouquet-Gate" of course happened. "That one little action--giving back the flowers--probably touched off more mail to me than anything I ever did or said as an astronaut."
- Sally refused to go on The Bob Hope Show because he exploits women. She then literally fled down, not even telling her husband where she'd gone. He was a bit annoyed with that.
- Sally had to sneak around to meet Svetalana Savitskaya, the second woman in space, due to politics. They only got to meet once and it sounds like they could never speak again, but they had a great time meeting each other.
- Sally didn't enjoy meeting the US ambassador to Norway when he made a rape joke. She called him out for that one, saying those aren't funny any more in the US.
- When on the Rogers committee investigating the Challenger disaster, Sally was slipped an anonymous report about the O-rings and their performance in cold temperatures vs. warm ones. She knew if it was traced to her, someone would get fired, so she slipped the paper to another commission member, who in turn planted the idea to look into that into the head of Richard Feynman. Feynman never knew the source, but he got it done.
- Sally thought Chuck Yeager was a jerk because he didn't actually bother to participate in the committee, snarking that he "showed some class by not coming to final ceremonies, would have shown more by resigning from Commission."
- Sally just told her husband Steve that she thought she didn't want to be married any more, and he went along with that. She never told him who she left him for.
- There's a quote from Sally about how high school boys get C's in math and think they can be engineers and high school girls with A's in math think they're not good enough. I hear that.
- Being on the Columbia investigation committee gave Sally an unfortunate case of deja vu. "I'm hearing a little bit of an echo here." This time Sally did her own leaking to the press about what they'd found.
I found it pretty interesting, and I think the author did the best she could with what she had to work with. Overall I give it about 3.5 stars, but that's really not the author's fault so much as there's only so close one can get to Sally, I think? It's probably about as comprehensive as you'd be able to do with a lady like that.