Astronaut Sally Ride Speaks With Gloria Steinem About Being the First American Woman in Space

The the latest episode of the wonderfully animated lost interview series “Blank on Blank” features a 1983 interview in which the legendary astronaut Sally Ride spoke with writer Gloria Steinem about what it was like being the first American woman in space, what it was like to be the only woman on the flight and the ridiculous interview questions she’d been asked.

Really the only bad moments in our training involved the press. The press was an added pressure on the flight for me and whereas NASA appeared to be very enlightened about flying women astronauts, the press didn’t appear to be. The things that they were concerned with were not the same things that I was concerned with. Just about every interview I got asked that. Everybody wanted to know about what kind of makeup I was taking up. They didn’t care about how well-prepared I was to operate the arm or deploy communications satellites.

images via Blank on Blank