On June 18, 1983, America celebrated Sally Ride as the first American woman in space.
The achievement was instantly recognized as historic. Newspapers splashed her face across front pages. Television networks covered the launch live. Young girls across the country suddenly had a new answer when asked what they wanted to be when they grew up.
What America didn’t know was that the woman making history that day would later be recognized as the first known LGBTQ+ astronaut.
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Ride’s launch aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger marked one breakthrough the nation could see in real time. The other would remain hidden for nearly three decades.
That dual legacy makes June 18 a uniquely powerful anniversary during Pride Month. It is the story of a woman who expanded America’s idea of who belonged among the stars while carrying a part of herself that the culture of the time wasn’t ready to see.
When Challenger lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, Ride became the first American woman to enter orbit. To the public, she was a pioneering astronaut. To much of the press corps, she seemed to be a scientific mystery of an entirely different kind: a woman headed into space.
Before Ride ever reached orbit, reporters peppered her with questions her male colleagues never faced. Would spaceflight affect her reproductive organs? Would she cry if something went wrong? Did she plan to bring makeup into orbit?
The questions revealed far more about the culture of the time than they did about the astronaut answering them.
Ride’s response was characteristically understated.
“It’s too bad this is such a big deal. It’s too bad it isn’t a commonplace thing.”
Yet the fact that it was a big deal wasn’t really about Sally Ride alone. Her launch was the culmination of a quiet revolution that had begun five years earlier.
The Class That Changed NASA
In 1978, NASA selected a new astronaut class unlike any before it.
For decades, the agency had drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of military test pilots, a world that effectively excluded women. But the Space Shuttle era demanded something different. NASA needed scientists, physicians, engineers, and researchers.
More than 8,000 people applied.
Among those selected were six women who would become known simply as “The Six.”
They arrived with résumés that spoke for themselves: engineers, surgeons, geologists, biochemists, and physicists. Yet much of the public conversation focused not on their qualifications but on their gender.
While journalists debated how women might function in space, these astronauts were quietly preparing to rewrite history.
[ THE '78 PIONEERS ]
┌───────────────┼───────────────┐
│ │ │
[RESNIK] [FISHER] [SULLIVAN]
Engineer Doctor Geologist
(Challenger) (First Mom) (Spacewalker)
│ │
[LUCID] [SEDDON]
Biochemist Surgeon
(Mir Record) (Space Surgery)Five other trailblazers stood alongside Ride:
Judith Resnik was a brilliant electrical engineer who earned a perfect math SAT score. Frustrated by the media’s obsession with gender, she observed, “Astronauts don’t have to be either very feminine or very masculine women… It’s about people in space.” She became the second American woman in space before tragically losing her life in the 1986 Challenger disaster.
Anna Fisher, a physician, flew aboard Discovery in 1984 just weeks after giving birth, becoming the first mother in space. When confronted with institutional skepticism, she focused on the mission itself: “When you’re in a spaceship, there are 1,000 people on Earth working to support you and it’s important to understand that ecosystem.”
Kathryn Sullivan, a marine geologist, became the first American woman to walk in space. Looking back, she resisted framing the achievement in gendered terms: “I never mentally framed the spacewalk as being the first for women; it was simply my first spacewalk.”
Shannon Lucid, a biochemist, was once told commercial airlines would never hire a woman pilot. She later spent a then-record 188 days aboard the Russian space station Mir. As she dryly noted: “Over the years… people have to admit that the women astronauts have performed just as well as the men astronauts.”
Rhea Seddon, a trauma surgeon, flew three shuttle missions and conducted pioneering medical experiments in orbit. Her approach to barriers was simple: “Basically, I just took advantage of everything I could.”
Together, they forced NASA to confront a reality it had largely ignored: women were not arriving as symbolic passengers. They were arriving as scientists, engineers, physicians, and astronauts.
The Great Tampon Question
For all of NASA’s engineering brilliance, some of its greatest challenges turned out to be surprisingly ordinary.
As Ride prepared for her first mission, agency planners confronted a problem they had never seriously considered before: what supplies should be packed for a woman astronaut?
One engineer reportedly asked whether 100 tampons would be enough for a six-day flight.
Ride, with the calm patience that became one of her trademarks, explained that it would not.
“No,” she replied. “That would not be the right number.”
The story has endured for decades because it perfectly captures a moment when one of the most technologically advanced organizations on Earth was discovering how little experience it had designing a space program that included women.
Worried the tampons might float away in zero gravity, engineers reportedly tied them together by their strings.
NASA had mastered orbital mechanics.
Female biology remained a work in progress.
[ NASA ENGINEERS ] ─── "Is 100 tampons enough for 6 days?" ───► [ SALLY RIDE ]The Makeup Kit Nobody Wanted
The tampon question wasn’t the only example.
Engineers also developed an elaborate makeup kit for female astronauts, complete with mirrors, lipsticks, applicators, and carefully engineered solutions to prevent cosmetic particles from floating through the shuttle.
When the women astronauts saw it, they politely declined.
They were more interested in learning emergency procedures than testing orbital cosmetics.
The irony was impossible to miss. NASA had figured out how to send humans into orbit, but it was still learning how to accommodate half the human race once they got there.
The Equipment Wasn’t Built for Them
Some obstacles were funny.
Others were not.
One of the most significant barriers facing women astronauts wasn’t public perception but hardware.
NASA’s spacesuits had been designed around the body dimensions of male astronauts. By the Shuttle era, budget decisions had eliminated some of the smaller suit components entirely.
NASA'S SUIT PROBLEM
┌─────────────────────────┐
│ HARD UPPER TORSO (HUT) │ ◄── Rigid, non-adjustable shoulder width
├─────────────────────────┤
│ NO SMALL SUITS MADE │ ◄── Budget cuts axed sizes 32-34
├─────────────────────────┤
│ THE RESULT │ ◄── Women effectively barred from EVAs
└─────────────────────────┘For astronauts with smaller frames, including some of the women in the 1978 class, that wasn’t merely inconvenient. It could determine whether they were eligible for a spacewalk at all.
For Seddon, the suit’s shoulder joints did not properly align with her frame, effectively preventing her from safely performing extravehicular activities. Representation wasn’t only about who got selected. It was also about whether the systems around them had ever been designed with them in mind.
The problem would persist for decades, occasionally resurfacing in highly publicized mission planning challenges. It served as a reminder that even rocket science can become a glass ceiling when the equipment only fits half the population.
The Legacy Sally Ride Couldn’t Share
While NASA wrestled with tampons, toilets, and spacesuits, Ride went to work.
Over 6 days, 2 hours, and 23 minutes aboard Challenger, she helped deploy communications satellites, operated the shuttle’s robotic arm, and became the first American woman to orbit Earth.
She did exactly what she had trained to do.
For years, that was the story the public knew.
Then, in 2012, after Ride died of pancreatic cancer, another part of her life became public. Her obituary revealed that she had spent the final 27 years of her life with her partner and collaborator, Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy.
The revelation transformed how many people understood her place in history. Ride became recognized as the first known LGBTQ+ astronaut, adding another groundbreaking dimension to a life that had already changed the course of American spaceflight.
Ride had already broken one of America’s most visible barriers. Yet she had done so while carefully protecting another part of her identity from public scrutiny.
In 1983, the country was still learning to accept women in the astronaut corps. The idea of an openly queer astronaut occupying that role was even further beyond the cultural horizon.
During Pride Month, that part of her story carries special weight. Visibility is often discussed as a public act, but for many people, especially in earlier generations, survival and success sometimes required privacy. Ride’s life sits at that intersection. She shattered one barrier in full view of the world while another remained hidden until after she was gone.
Forty-three years later, the famous stories still make people laugh: the reporters asking whether she would cry in space, the engineers wondering if 100 tampons would be enough for six days in orbit, the makeup kit nobody wanted.
But those stories endure because they reveal something larger. Sally Ride wasn’t simply overcoming the technical challenges of spaceflight. She was navigating the assumptions of an era.
On June 18, 1983, America knew it was witnessing history.
What it didn’t know was that it was witnessing two histories at once.
The first American woman in space.
The first known LGBTQ+ astronaut.
The world celebrated one in real time.
It took decades for the other to come into view.
Feature image: “#TBT: Sally Ride Becomes First American Woman in Space — June 18, 1983” by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
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