Today there is nothing unusual about a woman flying in space, walking in space, or living in space, which makes it difficult to imagine what it was like forty-five years ago for the six women who broke the highest of all glass ceilings to become astronauts. As Loren Grush shows in this illuminating book, they overcame daunting obstacles to make their indelible marks on Earth and in space>

Vorwort
The remarkable true story of America's first women astronauts - six extraordinary women, each making history going to orbit aboard NASA's Space Shuttle.

Autorentext

Loren Grush is a reporter for Bloomberg News specializing in all things space. Previously, she was a senior science reporter for the technology news website The Verge and hosted the online show Space Craft, which took her across the country to explore what it takes to train for space. The daughter of two NASA engineers, Grush grew up surrounded by rocket scientists. She has also been published in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Nautilus magazine, and has appeared on several TV networks as an expert commentator.

Klappentext

The remarkable true story of America's first women astronauts

'Lifts the curtain on the moment when Neil Armstrong's "one small step for man" expanded to encompass the talent, ambition and perseverance of America's first female astronauts' MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY, bestselling author of Hidden Figures

'Strap yourself in for a thrilling ride with genuine American heroes - six women who proved you don't need the right plumbing to have the right stuff!' LYNN SHERR, author of Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space

When NASA sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s the agency excluded women from the corps, arguing that only military test pilots - a group then made up exclusively of men - had the right stuff. It was an era in which women were steered away from jobs in science and deemed too fragile for space flight. Eventually, though, NASA relented and opened the application process to everyone, regardless of race or gender. From a 1977 candidate pool of 8,000 six elite women were selected - Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon.

In The Six, acclaimed journalist Loren Grush shows these brilliant and courageous women enduring claustrophobic - and sometimes deeply sexist - media attention, undergoing rigorous survival training, and preparing for years to take multi-million-dollar payloads into orbit. Together, the Six helped build the tools that made the space program run. One of the group, Judy Resnik, sacrificed her life when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded at 46,000 feet. Everyone knows of Sally Ride's history-making first space ride, but each of the Six would make their mark.