Atmosphere: A Love Story

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a US federal government agency established in 1958, combining four previously separate programs: the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the Naval Research Laboratory’s Project Vanguard, the Army’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. NASA was established in direct response to Sputnik 1, the first satellite, which the Soviet Union launched into orbit in 1957, beginning the era known as the Space Race.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, NASA jobs were primarily held by white men with military flight backgrounds. This included the men of the Mercury program (which launched the first American men into suborbital spaceflight), and the Apollo program, which landed the first men on the moon via Apollo 11 in 1969. However, the shuttle emergency in the late 1970s spurred major changes in spaceflight, including crucial technological advancements in the design of the shuttle to allow it to land like a plane, enabling reuse and safer spaceflight.

The other major change came when NASA officially opened astronaut candidate applications to women. Women had been part of the space program since the beginning, primarily in the areas of mathematics, computation, and engineering, as detailed in the nonfiction books Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016) by Margot Lee Shetterly (which was adapted into a film) and Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars (2016) by Nathalia Holt. However, NASA initially barred women from becoming astronauts.

As Atmosphere mentions, a previous program called The First Lady Astronaut program, or Mercury 13, attempted to train women astronauts in 1960 (the inspiration for Mary Robinette Kowal’s alternate history SF Lady Astronaut series). However, the program ended in 1962 when the federal government refused to certify the women candidates for flight training. This all changed when NASA accepted the first women candidates in 1977. Their training was completed in 1979.

Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983 aboard the shuttle Columbia. A new documentary, Sally (2025), details her experiences in NASA, including the need to hide her 27-year romantic relationship with her partner, Tam O’Shaugnessey, which wasn’t publicly revealed until after Ride’s death in 2012. Though Ride’s success marked a major shift in the culture and profession of space travel, gender (and race) discrimination still persisted in NASA, particularly in the attitudes shared by military pilots (all white men).