A Coincidence?
Being an astronaut was never really something Sally Ride ever thought about until she stumbled on an article in the Stanford student newspaper. It said that NASA was looking to recruit women, so Sally decided to call and ask for an application to join its space program in the 1970s. At the time, NASA had never hired a female astronaut, and Sally wanted to give it a shot.
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She was finishing up her Ph.D. and wanted to put herself out there. Her partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, told Business Insider, “She was eating breakfast in the cafeteria at Stanford, and she had one of those ‘aha’ moments. It was like: ‘Oh my God, I want to try to do that.’ So she sent in her letter to NASA.