During one of the countless, often boneheaded interviews Sally Ride endured about her pioneering role in the United States space program, she schools a reporter on how to address her. “It’s Dr. Ride or Sally, but not Miss,” she says, flashing a smile that softened the lecture and much of director Cristina Costantini’s absorbing documentary the first American woman to go into space.
Throughout “Sally,” Costantini (“Science Fair”) leans into Ride’s face — the smile, the blue eyes, the moments of pensive regard — by closing in on archival images. Sometimes, she creates a palpable presence by linking footage with audio from interviews Ride gave during her lifetime.
In 1978, Ride was among the first women to enter NASA’s space program. Her groundbreaking compatriots were Judith Resnik, Anna Fisher, Shannon Lucid, Margaret Seddon and Kathryn Sullivan. Fisher and Sullivan appear here with stories that illuminate the era, but also humanize both their own and Ride’s ambitions. (Resnik died in the 1985 Challenger explosion.)
Ride had been a Ph.D. candidate in physics at Stanford when NASA announced that it was opening its ranks to women and people of color. That year, out of 8,000 applicants, 1,500 were women. As for the demographic make-up of those in that first class who weren’t white males? A news anchor reported, “Six women, three Black and one oriental.”
Costantini and editor Kate Hackett make deft use of plentiful archival footage, often manifesting the energy and excitement that the U.S. space program generated, while having fun doing it: The director buoys a montage of Ride teaming up for flight training with John Fabian after they were announced as Challenger crewmembers with ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky.”
Having flown missions during the Vietnam War, astronaut Mike Mullane tells the filmmaker he didn’t think the women admitted had “paid their dues.” He recounts telling a joke in which the punchline was “tits.” After that he and Ride seldom interacted. In 1978, Mullane was the sinewy, crew-cut embodiment of the men profiled in Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff.” And the filmmaker follows up his dismissiveness with sitcom and movie clips making jabs at the notion of female astronauts. They are examples of bias, to be sure, but also signs of an impressive lack of imagination.
Besides confirming what an uphill battle Ride and her female colleagues faced at NASA, the runup to Ride’s historic flight reminds viewers that any rocket flight could be at once routine, astonishing and dangerous. As she sat in the cockpit of the Challenger before it blasted off, Ride focused on the placement of her pencil.
Ride died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer. Yet, as much as she had been covered by the media, her obituary came with the revelation that she had been with her life partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, for 27 years. “I was furious,” Lynn Sherr, a journalist who had covered the space program and had become a friend, admits somewhat jokingly. “And then I was sad.”
The sense that on a perfect planet, or merely an open and just society, Ride should have been able to be the remarkable astronaut she was and live “out and proud and all that stuff,” to quote O’Shaughnessy, pervades “Sally.” Much of the film is informed by O’Shaughnessy’s accounts of their relationship. (They first met at tweens at a tennis camp where Billie Jean King taught.) Ride’s mom and sister make illuminating cameos.
At the time Ride and O’Shaughnessy’s love affair began, Ride was married to Challenger classmate Steven Hawley, who appears among the interviewees. Like so much that orbited around that class of astronauts, the marriage between two space nerds got ink. Fellow astronaut Kathy Sullivan recalls thinking at the time, “What a great PR move.”
The filmmaker balances the notions that Ride didn’t come out publicly because she was a deeply private person and that she may have feared that had she come out, she would have lost a great deal. Both can be true.
The public embrace of NASA’s space program was upended when the Challenger exploded in 1986. Among those onboard was Judy Resnick, who had been the other woman NASA had considered for that historic voyage. Ride heard about the disaster while on a commercial flight headed back to California from Atlanta, having visited O’ Shaughnessy. Once she learned the extent to which NASA hadn’t been truthful around safety concerns, she resigned.
A month before her death, Ride encouraged O’Shaughnessy to speak as openly as she wanted about their relationship. She is and “Sally” is a consequential work because of her insights. While Ride and O’ Shaughnessy never wed. Her candor here marries a spectacular professional saga with the personal love story convincingly.
Throughout “Sally,” Costantini accompanies O’Shaughnessy’s reminiscences with re-creations, which can feel sweet if unnecessary. They also serve a restorative function, putting Ride and O’Shaughnessy’s relationship into the public realm where it belongs.
The National Geographic doc turns out to be timely. The opening up of the space program was in response to civil rights legislation. And the work the Sally Ride Science Academy — started in 2001 by Ride, O’Shaughnessy and others — has done to expand STEM education makes space for all.
