
Sally Ride, first American woman in space, has died at 61 - splat
https://www.sallyridescience.com/sallyride/bio
======
RockyMcNuts
First lesbian in space, apparently.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/sally-ride-first-
am...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/sally-ride-first-american-
woman-female-partner-_n_1696537.html)

Unfortunate she felt she had to keep it to herself her whole life.

At the time she was applying, it might have disqualified her, security
clearances weren't given since it was felt gays were exposed to blackmail.
Plus Reagan era officials might not have viewed it as great PR.

[edit] Also a shame her partner of 27 years doesn't get the privileges of a
spouse.

~~~
samstave
Its so fucking hilarious and sad that "gays were exposed to blackmail" thus
not given clearance when the highest positions in many intelligence agencies
are held by gays.

Hoover, (hitlers SS lead - failing on name), and many others... not to mention
the latest cabal in the US agencies who i will not name at this time.

This world is so fucking broken.

~~~
Mithrandir
> _(hitlers SS lead - failing on name)_

Did you mean Ernst Röhm? (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm>) He
wasn't SS, he was part of Sturmabteilung.

------
dredmorbius
Ride on, Sally Ride.

As usual, an apropos xkcd reference, though this was a blog post, and
concerned the surviving Apollo astronauts:
<http://blog.xkcd.com/2012/07/12/a-morbid-python-script/>

~~~
jmspring
Your comment "Ride on, Sally Ride", when I read of her death, I actually ended
up with Mustang Sally in my head.

Thanks for the XKCD link.

------
swang720
A tragedy, and I wonder if being in space had anything to do with the
development of her cancer. Astronauts must be bombarded by levels of radiation
that people on Earth are not exposed to on a daily basis.

~~~
dantheman
Here's a good PDF about space radiation:
htttp://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenews/factsheets/pdfs/radiation.pdf

~~~
splat
Fixed link:
[http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenews/factsheets/pdfs/radiat...](http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenews/factsheets/pdfs/radiation.pdf)

~~~
CamperBob2
Sounds like they get blasted pretty hard, with the equivalent of several
hundred chest X-rays over a 6-month tour.

~~~
rdl
A shuttle mission is at most 3-4 mSv/day, and depends on orbit. ISS is about
80 per 180 day mission. A whole-body CT is 10-12 mSv. Non-trivial, but not
huge.

------
melling
Another one to pancreatic cancer...

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/>

~~~
kabdib
I lost a friend to pancreatic cancer earlier this year. One of the best
programmers I ever met. He was diagnosed in late December and died in mid-
March.

This stuff sucks.

------
rglovejoy
Try: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-
way/2012/07/23/157250870/sal...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-
way/2012/07/23/157250870/sally-ride-first-american-woman-in-space-is-dead)

~~~
skystorm
> [...] a long journey that started in 1977 when the Ph.D. candidate answered
> an ad seeking astronauts for NASA missions.

Somehow that just blows my mind, become an astronaut simply by responding to
an ad in a student newspaper. Oh, the early days of space travel... :)

------
runjake
Blue skies, Miss Ride.

