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All Of It with Alison Stewart
Sally Ride's Groundbreaking NASA Mission Came With a Cost
00:27:25
In the early 1980s, NASA astronaut Sally Ride became a sensation as the first American woman to travel to space.
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- [00:00]
Alison Stewart
All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates for multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. This is all of it from wnyc. Hi, I'm Alison Stewart and I'm excited to tell you about a special event we've got coming up in just a couple of weeks with the freshly Tony winning band from Broadway's Buena Vista Social Club. The Broadway adaptation of the Clip classic album was one of this year's most nominated shows. It earned four awards at last night's ceremony. Let me see. Sounds so good. Including best orchestrations and a special Tony for the show's band. And on June 24, we'll have that band right here in the green space at WNYC studios for a live broadcast of all of it. It will be a special special hour of live radio and live music. And you can be there, too. It's a free event, part of the citywide's New York Music Month initiative. Tickets are first come, first serve, so you won't be able to guarantee a seat if you show up late. So make sure you get yourself there early. We have to be live on the air at noon with the Buena Vista Social club. Go to wnyc.org events to RSVP before we are sold out. That's noon on June 24th in the green space with me and the newly Tony winning band from Buena Vista Social Club. That is our plan for the future. But right now, let's talk space. On June 18, 1983, NASA astronaut Sally Ride was one of the most famous people in the world, or really in space. She was an astronaut, physicist and the first woman to travel in space. The media frenzy around her was huge and she sat for interviews, answered many questions, but she was very quiet about her personal life. It was not until Sally Ride died in 2012 that people learned in her obituary of Sally's romantic relationship with the woman, her Life partner for 27 years, Tam O' Shaughnessy. A new documentary finally tells the full story of Sally Ride, including interviews with her life partner, ex husband, former girlfriend, family members, and those who worked closest with her at NASA. The film is called Sally. It premieres on nat Geo on June 16th. Director okay, let's see if we get this right. Christina Cassanini Constantini, Very Close is here now in the studio. Welcome back to WNYC thank you so much.
- [03:12]
Christina Costantini
Thank you for having me.
- [03:13]
Alison Stewart
Let's get a little basic information. She was born in 1951. Where was she born? Where did she grow up? What did she seem to have a knack for as a kid?
- [03:21]
Christina Costantini
So she's an LA girl, or the first valley girl in space, some people said. And she was an incredible tennis player. So her childhood is quite amazing because she actually met her life partner when she was 13 years old, and Tam was 12, and they were in tennis camp together. And Sally was such a good tennis player that she probably could have gone pro. Tam did. And Billie Jean King was their hero and good friend when they were growing. So it was really amazing time to be a kid in California playing tennis.
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Alison Stewart
She grew up during the golden age of the space program. What influence did that have on her eagerness to succeed at NASA?
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Christina Costantini
Yeah, you know, she grew up with this astronauts as the dream, you know, but she. She didn't think women could be part of that dream. So she had kind of closed off that opportunity, even though she is the quintessential astronaut and has all of the skills and the personal personality type to be an astronaut. And then she was reading in the Stanford newspaper where she was at school, that they were opening up the program to women. And she knew immediately that's what I want to do. And it was an incredible, incredible journey. So our film is the public story that we all know, and using the gorgeous archival footage from NASA and this very, very private story that hardly anyone knew when she was alive. And we wanted to celebrate this amazing romance and the secret life that Sally and Tam lived.
- [04:53]
Alison Stewart
Let's talk about your work as a filmmaker. That was serious, having to pull all of that footage from NASA. And I understand, like, the sound didn't sync up.
- [05:02]
Christina Costantini
Yeah, Exactly. We had 5,000 reels. Over 5,000 reels that we brought in. And none of it had sound. Almost none of it had sound. So a huge project for our editors, for our archival producer was. Was sinking all of that together and trying to make sense and trying to build scenes out of this, these random clips of archive that we were finding from all over, from NASA's, you know, basements. And it was. It was a joy, but it was definitely the hardest part of the film.
- [05:29]
Alison Stewart
What did you think when you said, oh, my gosh, 5,000 hours of footage?
- [05:34]
Christina Costantini
Well, it was 5,000 reals, longer than an hour. You know, it's a real mountain of footage, you know, and the hardest part was going through it. But it was a blessing and a curse for sure. Having that much to go through. But it's beautiful, beautiful archive. And I, I really am excited for people to see it because a lot of it had never been seen before, had never been unearthed. We were digitizing it for the first time, and so it was, it was a joy to see these things that had just been sitting, you know, in a basement for 40 years. To be the first person to see them was so exciting.
- [06:07]
Alison Stewart
Oh, that's so exciting. Oh, my gosh. Listeners, do you want to get in on this conversation? Do you remember Sally Ride? Did you watch her groundbreaking mission back in the 80s? What are your memories of witnessing her achievement? Give us a call now. 2124-3396-9221-2433, wnyc. If you're a woman or a young girl who saw Sally Ride go to space, the first American woman to go to space, how was she inspirational in your life? Did Sally Ride make you want to learn more about science or even be an astronaut? 212-433-969-2212, wnyc. My guest is Christina Costantini. I'll just say it. Okay, Christina Costantini. We are talking about her film. Thank you, Sally. It's premiering on National Geographic on June 16th. As you said, she was at Stanford. She read about NASA seeking out people coming to the space program. They were initially seeking out women and people of color. Is that correct? Exactly, yes. How did she feel about her chances?
- [07:09]
Christina Costantini
Well, you know, she knew she was perfect for it, but I think she thought, never in a million years am I gonna get to be an astronaut. She had just finished her PhD. She was also the youngest astronaut ever at that time. And so she was a baby. And she came out to she did this really intense interview process. She thought she did well. And then one morning she got the call, and they basically said, do you still want that job that you applied for? And she said, absolutely. And, you know, it was a dream. I think it really gave her purpose for those nine years that she was an astronaut. But she's an incredible brain astrophysicist, and she was an astrophysicist her whole life and became an educator. But it was such a, such a joy to be able to tell the story of someone who is my hero. I grew up idolizing her. I painted a mural of her on my elementary school wall that's still there. And so it's really a dream, I think, for a lot of girls, which I'm sure maybe some of your callers have this Feeling we thought, you know, if a girl can go to space, maybe I can do big things, too. So I think the symbolism of just going and breaking the highest class ceiling is huge for so many.
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Alison Stewart
What kind of culture did Sally ride and the people of color walk into NASA when they first arrived?
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Christina Costantini
Yeah. I mean, you'll see in our film, some of my favorite and least favorite parts are these really crazy exchanges of reporters asking her insane questions. And to her fellow. There were six female astronaut candidates at the time. Tom Brokaw asks Judy Resnik, you know, don't people think you're too cute to be an astronaut? And, you know, it's not that long ago. You know, it's not that long ago that all this happened. But, you know, there were out of 4,000 technical employees at NASA at the time, only four were women when they arrived. So four out of 4,000. It was not very common. And the same for people of color. There were very, very few people of color. And so everybody had to, you know, perform twice as well to just blend to people, not question if they deserve their jobs.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah. Cause some of the men there said, like, I deserve to be there. I went to West Point. Who are you?
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Christina Costantini
Exactly?
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Alison Stewart
Be honest.
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Christina Costantini
Yeah. And when there's an astronaut in our film, Mike Mullane, who, you know, is the first person to say, I was the problem. And I thought that Sally had no business being there. We had. We were fighter pilots, women in. You know, in his words, women in. In space. That's crazy. I can. So, you know, it was. It was seen as absurd to some people who were astronauts at that time.
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Alison Stewart
What was it about Sally Ride that made people change their tune? That made them realize, okay, she's the real deal?
- [09:57]
Christina Costantini
Yeah. I mean, Sally was excellent at her job, and she had an incredible combination of personal traits. She was brilliant. She was composed. She was really good. In these press moments, I think you can see her firing back very quickly. She was funny, which I think made her a good team member. People liked being around her. And honestly, she didn't want the spotlight. So she was chosen, I think, in part because she was a real introvert. And she didn't want to be a famous person. She wanted to be an astronaut, but she was this. She had an incredibly difficult line to walk. She had to perform incredibly well in space and incredibly well in front of the press. And I'm so grateful that she did, because, you know, she really opened the door for the rest of the female astronauts. It's very easy to mess up in space in public and she walked that line very beautifully.
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Alison Stewart
It's interesting, though, you could see some motivation in her that she did have sort of her eye on the prize. Like, I could be the first American woman in space. What were the clues that even though she was a little bit of an introvert, she could go there, she could be the one.
- [11:09]
Christina Costantini
Yeah, she was certainly very competitive. And from her tennis days, she. She wanted to win. She wanted to be the first. And so there are moments in the film from. You'll see from other female astronauts who, you know, Sallie Mayer was not the perfect feminist icon that we want her to be at all times. You know, Kathy Sullivan, who is one of the candidates. There's this moment where she sabotages her. Seemingly sabotages. She might have been playing a practical joke, but when so much is at stake, how funny is that joke? When they're in the robotic arm simulator, she flips some switches and makes it stop working. As one of her rivals is essentially auditioning for this. This role of first woman in space. So, yeah, it's incredibly type A competitive.
- [12:00]
Alison Stewart
We are talking about the film Sally. It's about astronaut Sally Ride. It's premiering on National Geographic on June 16th. My guest is Christina Cassanini. We are taking your calls. Do you remember Sally Ride? What are your memories of witnessing her groundbreaking mission? Our number is 212433, WNYC 212-433-9692. We'll talk about her being an astronaut in a moment. But the other part of your film is about her personal life. First of all, you interview her. I think you interview her mom and her sister. Mom's hilarious. What effect do you think growing up in that household? Kind of the way they dealt with the world. That helped Sally or hurt her in some ways, but mostly helped her.
- [12:50]
Christina Costantini
Yeah, I think Sally was in Master Compartmentalizer, which is a skill set that is really helpful when you're an astronaut, when you're sitting on tens of thousands of gallons of basically a live bomb. Being a compartmentalizer is really good. But then, you know, being in a relationship with somebody who's a master compartmentalizer is difficult. And I think that's what Tam ran into. And you see in the film where she gets it from her mother, Joyce ride, who was 100 years old when I interviewed her, but sharp as attack. And it is the hardest interview I've ever done in my life. And one of my favorite parts of the film, because you so clearly see she shuts me down, essentially many.
- [13:30]
Alison Stewart
She shuts right down.
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Christina Costantini
Many, many times. And I ask her, what are her feelings on feelings? And she says, if I knew, I wouldn't tell you. And I think that's, you know, that's where Sally learned her how to interact with the world and how to express her emotions, which is from someone who didn't express their emotions.
- [13:46]
Alison Stewart
I felt for you in those moments as an interviewer, I felt for you. I was like, oh, my. This was a long day.
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Christina Costantini
A long day, Yeah. I mean, hardest interview in my life, I've done. I've been an investigative journalist. I've interviewed hundreds of people. But Joyce Ride will always be the hardest, I think.
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Alison Stewart
Tam o' Shaughnessy. Did she like being interviewed about Sally Ride?
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Christina Costantini
You know, Tam and I became very close making this film together. And she's a wonderful. You know, she's really a godsend for any documentary filmmaker because she is eloquent. She has an incredible memory. But mostly she wants to go there and she wants to be vulnerable, and she wants Sally to be remembered for who Sally really was, as opposed to just the half of Sally that we knew from our history books. So she was an incredible collaborator in this and an incredible interview subject. And to give away that. To put that amount of trust in me and the creative team, I really admire her and commend her because I don't think the film would be nearly as interesting if we didn't have that vulnerability of what the relationship was actually like and the beauty of the romance. And, you know, we really wanted to capture the feeling of being in love. Having a secret, you know, being secretly in a relationship with the most famous woman in the world, I think was a quite intense experience, and she speaks to it very well.
- [15:12]
Alison Stewart
Was any topic off the table?
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Christina Costantini
No. I mean, to Tam's great credit, we talked about everything. She never said, I don't want to go there. She understood that the documentary would be better if she told us everything good and bad about who Sally really was. And to me, that makes Sally even more of a real human and a greater hero to me that, you know, that she wasn't perfect. She was flawed. Like, all of us are flawed.
- [15:37]
Alison Stewart
Sally Ride was married. For people who are, like, going through their memory banks, like, wait a minute. Sally Ride was married? At one point, it was a fellow astronaut. His name was Steve Holly. Was there ever romance between the two?
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Christina Costantini
You know, Steven, I interviewed Steve as part of this, and he said it was not a typical relationship. They spent a lot of times apart. They, you know, it was more of a roommate situation. So it's an interesting question. And I think in the film we kind of explore how odd that relationship was. And a lot of people don't know exactly what Sally was thinking in that moment on why she married Steve. But certainly in a heteronormative environment like NASA, it would be a good thing to be married to a man, especially if you're having queer, if you have queer romances and queer feelings under the surface that the relationship might have been a way of covering up this part of her that would not have been celebrated at the time.
- [16:42]
Alison Stewart
We're talking about the documentary Sally. It's about astronaut Sally Ride. It's going to premiere on National Geographic on June 16th. We'll have more after a quick break. This is ALL of it. You are listening to ALL of IT on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We're speaking about the new documentary Sally about astronaut Sally Ride. It's premiering on nat Geo on June 16. My guest is Christina Costatini.
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Christina Costantini
Perfect. Yes.
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Alison Stewart
Do you remember Sally Ride? Do you remember her great mission? Give us a call, 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC or a woman or a young girl who Sally Ride, go to space. How inspirational was she in your Life? Our number's 212433. WNYC 21 2. We've got a clip from your film and this film, it's about how the men at NASA didn't know how to put together a toiletry kit for a female astronaut. You'll hear from Sally and you'll hear from her female colleagues. Take a listen and we can talk about it on the other side. This is from Sally. There was a very conventional set of things in the men's toiletry kits, but what should go in the equivalent kit for women? Sally was the first woman to take stock of what they call crew equipment. They knew that a guy might want a shaving kit, but they didn't know what a female astronaut would take. And so the engineers at NASA in their infinite wisdom designed a makeup kit. You know, a makeup kit brought to you by NASA engineers. And then they asked how many tampons should fly on a one week flight. She gets to one of these toiletry kits and it's the spring loaded canvas covered thing. She pops it open. He asked me, is 100 the right number? I said, no, that would not be the right number. Sally keeps pulling this out like one of those exploding snakes in a party trick. All six of us for at least half a year would not have used every tampon that was in there. First of all, you need makeup in space.
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Christina Costantini
Of course, you also, in the pictures, you can see that the different shades of makeup that they designed, it was so bad.
- [19:20]
Alison Stewart
What did you first think when you heard these anecdotes? Because we're talking about 1980s.
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Christina Costantini
Yeah. I mean, I loved this story. So perfectly embodies the absurdity that they treated Sally and the rest of the women with. At the time. It's like the smartest people in the world. The literal rocket scientists cannot figure out the basics of half of the human population's bodies. They presumably have mothers, sisters, wives, many of them, anyone they could ask. And instead, they get to the point of asking Sally Ride if she needs 100 tampons in space. But I just got such a kick out of it that this is what a foreign creature women were to NASA at that time.
- [20:06]
Alison Stewart
Let's take a call. This is Sally from the Upper west side. Hi, Sally. Well, obviously, since my name is Sally, the minute that she was announced as an astronaut, I started paying attention. I mean, I was always a fan of the space program, but the fact that there was a woman and that she happened to share my name made it special. You know, she. She just made us really proud. When they came out with the Sally Ride stamp, I bought several sheets of it and used it for all my Christmas cards that year. Oh, that's a. That's a great story. Thank you for calling Sally. We appreciate it. It was June 18, 1983. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. What was the reaction on the ground? Especially women.
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Christina Costantini
Yeah, I think there's a sense of overwhelming pride that Sally could do it. I also think that people were scared. You know, there was a. In the film, a woman says, let's hope she doesn't mess it up for the rest of us. I think there's a lot of pressure to have half of the human population watching you and having to perform and knowing that if you messed up, there would be so much attention on your mistake. And so. But, you know, women. Girl brought people, brought their girls to the launch. People's eyes were filled with tears just watching the symbolism of seeing a woman go up. So I think it was an incredibly meaningful moment around the world, and especially here in the States after the launch.
- [21:45]
Alison Stewart
Life gets a little hard for Sally sometimes. She goes missing for chunks of time. She kind of. After being this. This wave of media frenzy. What does this time in her life, what does it cost her to be the first?
- [22:01]
Christina Costantini
Yeah, I. I think it costs her immense. An immense amount. I mean, as we talked about, she's an incredibly introverted person. And so she was great at all the technical aspects of the job. But being in public, having people come up to her with tears in their eyes and emotional about what she represented to them, that was a very stressful position for her to be in. And having to go to all these talks and meetings, and everybody wanted a piece of her in a different way and wanted her to represent their movement and come talk to their school and come talk to their program. And she had to. She would run away at certain points. Bob Hope wanted her on the show, and she felt that Bob Hope was very sexist, and so she didn't tell anyone, not even her husband, and she. She ran away and no one could find her. So it caused her a lot of strain and stress. And she was very young, and making sense of the fact that she meant so much to so many people she didn't know, I think was an overwhelming experience for her. As she aged, she got better at using the symbolism of her name by directing it towards purposes she really cared about. So she became an incredible advocate for women in stem, and she called her organization Sally and wore her little jumpsuit everywhere she went, and I think understood her role as a symbol in a way she just didn't when she was younger or couldn't appreciate or love as much as I think she wished she could.
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Alison Stewart
The thing that I didn't remember was that Sally Ride was instrumental after the Challenger disaster.
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Christina Costantini
Yes, absolutely.
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Alison Stewart
She was appointed to a government commission to investigate what went wrong with Challenger, and. And she later resigned from NASA. How did the Challenger disaster change her relationship with NASA?
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Christina Costantini
Yeah, I think it was a very difficult time for her and for many astronauts because there was this feeling of betrayal of all these people who they thought would value their lives above all else were making decisions that it was the fact that it wasn't just a random error, that there were people who knew that. That these O rings were a problem or that taking off at certain temperatures could be deadly and okayed that flight anyway. I think it was a real sense of betrayal. And Sally was very instrumental in kind of secretly getting a memo with the data that revealed the problem to the panel and without getting anyone fired, which was a very masterful kind of scheme that she. She pulled off. But there was certainly a rupture. And I think she realized she really wanted to be in space. That's why she wanted to be an astronaut. She was kind of sick of the public figure stuff, and so she realized that she wasn't going to be able to get into space for a very long time after the panel or after the investigation. And so she retired and went on to teaching, which she loved. She absolutely loved teaching.
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Alison Stewart
After mission, Sally and Tam, they finally get together. They're together for 27 years. Did people around her understand what was going on with her and Tam?
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Christina Costantini
No. I mean, they really kept it secret for a very long time from some of their closest friends. I mean, it's remarkable to me, you know, they would go to conferences together, they would share the same room together. There are people they would work with daily. They would have to, you know, lie about whose dog was whose or. There were uncomfortable moments. And that really drained on Tammy. As I said before, Sally is a master compartmentalizer. So she. I don't think it bothered her as much as it bothered Tam, but Tam wanted to be out in public and hold hands with Sally and do all the things that couples do publicly with Sally. And, you know, there was a lot of fear that there could be retribution. They had a lot of funders that were big companies, Exxon Mobil and the like, and they were worried that they would lose sponsorship for the thing that they cared most about, which was. Was Sally Ride Science. And so even some of their closest friends didn't know Sally's sister is gay. And Sally made Tam come out basically on her behalf to her sister. This is how little she wanted to talk about, you know, these private matters. So I think it was very difficult for Tam, especially as the world started opening up a bit, and especially, you know, as the risk seemed less apparent to her.
- [26:41]
Alison Stewart
What did it mean for Tam to be open about the relationship? What did it mean to her when you were talking to her about it?
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Christina Costantini
Yeah, I mean, I think there is. I think there's a lot of release for Tam and finally being able to be herself. If you meet Tam, she's an incredibly open person. She's an incredibly honest person. She wants to be herself in every moment. So for her to have this huge thing that she's not able to share with even some of their closest friends, it really weighed on her. So I think she feels a lightness and a freedom now. And, you know, every astronaut throughout history has been able to take pictures next to their spouse and, you know, well, all the men in the Mercury and the Apollo programs. And so I think part of our project of her film is placing Tam in that history and allowing her to be celebrated with her wife.
- [27:32]
Alison Stewart
The name of the film is Sally. It's about Sally Ride, her career and her life. It's premiering on nat Geo on June 16. My guest has been Director Christina Constantini. Thank you for being with us.
- [27:45]
Christina Costantini
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
- [27:47]
Alison Stewart
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