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Sally Ride Takes Her Final Flight

Posted by Unknown on from the new-life-haunting-the-iss dept.

fructose writes "Sally Ride, America's first woman in space died today at age 61. She succumbed to pancreatic cancer according to her office in San Diego. Here's to wishing her a safe trip on her final journey."

2 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Sally Ride was a Lesbian by adisakp · · Score: 5, Informative

    I found out reading her obituary that she had a partner of 27 years, a fact that - despite her status as an American Hero - was not publicly announced until after her death.

    1. Re:Sally Ride was a Lesbian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Except she wasn't (publicly) a lesbian when she rode the shuttle. She was married to Steve Hawley (another astronaut). They married in 1982, she got her seat on the shuttle in 1983. She got together again with Tam O'Shaughnessy in 1985 (they were childhood friends), and she divorced Hawley in 1987. I would suspect that the marriage to Steve Hawley was more a political move (on her part, at least) to dispel any question within NASA about her sexuality and secure her position as the first American woman in space. Had she been an admitted lesbian in 1983, I seriously doubt she would have gotten her shot to go into space. The fact that she left NASA the same year she divorced Hawley lends credence to the possibility that the revelation of her sexuality (at least, internally within the organization) ended her space career.