Destined to make a difference: Remembering Sally Ride

Sally Ride, the first U.S. woman in space, died of pancreatic cancer after a 17-month battle on Monday, at age 61. For anyone in my generation, the name “Sally Ride” evokes more than just the song “Mustang Sally,” which followed her throughout her life. It is a direct line in to our elementary and middle school cafeteria gatherings to watch Space Shuttle launches all together on TV — right before science got ‘hard’ and stopped being ‘fun’ for too many kids.

That’s a school age that Ride was particularly concerned about, in terms of when and why girls still – even in the 21st century – get turned off from, pressured out of, or embarrassed by their interest in science.

That was the one thing Ride was passionate enough about to actually use her name for, after her astronaut days were over: encouraging girls to follow their passion in science. In that capacity, you could say she expressed facets of both her Cancer ascendant and her Aquarius Moon: she was a kind of techno-mom to all girls interested in science and space. We’ll come back to her Moon — as well as more of her astrology — in a moment. First, a little sketch of Ride’s life.

Sally Ride was born in Los Angeles, CA on May 26, 1951. Her early Gemini Sun is closely conjunct Mars, and it showed: as a kid she was fiercely athletic. Her parents pushed her into tennis lessons so she’d stop playing street football, and she got so good that none less than Billie Jean King suggested she turn pro. Ride’s keen intellect and interest in science were clear early on, too – and she chose college over pro tennis.

Eventually ending up at Stanford, Ride went on to double major in physics and English (specializing in Shakespeare) for her BA, and then earned a Master’s and a PhD in physics. Around the time she was finishing at Stanford, she read a NASA recruitment ad, saw that they were basically looking for her, and made the cut out of 8,000 applicants.

At NASA, Ride trained in the usual stuff – like flying jet planes and jumping out of them. She also switched from physics to engineering, helping to develop a robotic arm for the shuttle. In fact, she was chosen for her first mission in 1983, aboard STS-7, partly due to her expertise with the device.

Ride went on to fly in the shuttle Challenger again in 1984, and was training for a third mission when NASA suspended the shuttle program after the 1986 Challenger explosion. She retired the following year, and was named by then-president Ronald Reagan to the presidential commission investigating the accident. (Incidentally, she was also named to a similar panel to investigate the Columbia disaster in 2003 – the only person to be named to both).

After NASA, Ride went on to hold various space- and science-related positions, including the Stanford University Center for International Security and Arms Control, a professorship in physics, and founding Sally Ride Science in 2001. At the time of her death, ride’s company acknowledged that she is survived by her female partner of 27 years, Tam O’Shaughnessy, who was also chief operating officer of Sally Ride Science.

Not only was Sally Ride the first U.S. woman in space, but she was the first lesbian woman in space. Ride was a pioneer, an innovator and a scientist who used both sides of her brain (as would befit a Gemini – remember that English major). Her chart shows us nothing less.

I’ve touched on her Sun and Moon, but there are a couple of real standout aspects that practically shout out who she was, and they are connected by a common planet: Jupiter. Her Jupiter is in early Aries, conjunct Eris. It is the most elevated major planet in her chart and it is square Uranus in her early Cancer ascendant – within arc minutes. Not only are these aspects hot in her natal chart on their own, but they are being transited right now by the Uranus-Pluto square (big evolutionary/revolutionary energy) and just recently Mars (drive and desire). That’s a lot of energy for anyone to channel; when you’ve been battling cancer for a year and a half, I imagine it could either turn the tide or simply be exhausting.

Jupiter-Uranus contacts such as this express themselves as an inventor/scientist/pioneer according to Richard Tarnas. Sally Ride was destined to be different, and having Uranus in her Cancer ascendant tells us part of her distinction would come from being a woman in what she did. Martha Lang Wescott tells us that the closest square or opposition in a person’s chart indicates their career, and you can’t get much closer than the 23 arc minutes separating Jupiter and Uranus. Her contribution was going to be far-reaching.

Uranus also represents Ride’s interest in science, and sure enough, she helped to innovate a robotic arm that was used in space. But Ride’s Uranus is just above the horizon, putting it in the 12th; she was, in a way, a ‘secret innovator’: it was not public until her death that she was the first America lesbian in space. The question is, why was that?

Now check out that Jupiter-Eris conjunction right at the top of her chart. You could see that Eris as having to do with her hidden, publicly cast-off sexuality, but it works even better in its affirmative expression. Much like Rachel Maddow (whose Eris Eric wrote about here), Ride is a ‘standout’ person – not standing out on the sidelines, but standing out from the crowd for all the best reasons.

In case you’re wondering, the positive expression of Eris and its echoes of Maddow is not the only indicator of Ride’s sexuality. Eric is fond of pointing to the inherent potential for bisexuality in Gemini, and Ride was married to fellow NASA astronaut Steve Hawley for five years in the 1980s. But directly across from Ride’s Sun-Mars conjunction in Gemini is the asteroid Sappho at 4+ degrees Sagittarius. To quote Eric, “That gets a gee whiz. She was like a dude.” Sappho is also conjunct the asteroid Juno, goddess of marriage; no wonder she and O’Shaughnessy went the distance, with a friendship that began when both were young tennis players.

Finally, I’d like to come back to that 8th house Aquarius Moon. Kind of like how Ride’s 11th house Sun-Mars conjunction didn’t really take off at full throttle until she took her place in the public eye (an 11th house theme), I think her Moon and Cancer ascendant also saw some of their finest expression in her wider community.

We can’t really speculate too much on her private relationships, since she never wrote her memoirs or allowed a TV movie about her life. But in addition to her Moon giving her the detachment necessary to be good in a crisis (something you want on a space mission), I think her ascendant found its maternal expression in guiding and inspiring generations of young girls to stick with their passion for science.

Ride was not known for being publicly emotional or demonstrative. During the presidential hearings on the Challenger tragedy, she was known for asking tough questions and some of the findings angered her.

But after the testimony of Roger Boisjoly, an engineer who had worked for the company that made the shuttle’s rocket boosters and who had been shunned by colleagues for revealing that he had warned his bosses — and NASA — that the boosters’ seals could fail in cold weather, Ride publicly hugged him. Boisjoly, who died in February, said that she was the only panelist to offer him support – and that it had helped him through some very difficult times.

Sally Ride the techno-mom, who felt just as at home orbiting the Earth as running around on its surface and thinking about how the Earth worked, opened her arms – and the world of science for countless girls – at just the right time.

P.S. In preparing this article, I realized that Sally Ride died just one year and two days after the last ever Space Shuttle landing. You can read the subscriber issue Eric wrote about that event, called “Space Shuttle Lands on Another World,” here.