Sally Ride's Astronaut Class Completely Changed NASA's Demographics

This week, former astronaut Sally Ride lost her battle with pancreatic cancer. Countless obituaries have lauded Ride as the first woman astronaut and highlighted her role as as a trailblazer for women in science. But there's more to her story. Her selection and appointment to the crew of STS-7 was part of a larger shift within NASA that not only saw women fly in space, but also NASA’s ranks being filled with scientists and astronauts from a much more diverse demographic.

In the late 1950s, NASA considered sending a wide variety of people into space. Acrobats, daredevils, and contortionists were briefly considered as potential astronauts, as were a group of 13 women – smaller and lighter than men, they were simpler payload on the less powerful Redstone and Atlas rockets NASA was planning to use at the time. But President Eisenhower made one demand that severely limited the astronaut candidate pool: astronauts must be military test pilots.

The rationale was that spaceflight was expected to put similar strains on astronauts as flying cutting edge aircraft put on test pilots. Military status and security clearance didn't hurt either. The US was in the Cold War, after all.

Candidates for NASA's first group of astronauts had to be under 40, shorter than five feet eleven inches, in excellent physical condition, hold a bachelor's degree in engineering or its equivalent, have graduated of a test pilot school, and be a qualified jet pilot with at least 1,500 hours of flying time. Seems rather specific, right? In fact, the requirements were so specific that only 110 men met them. The first 69 to volunteer were interviewed, 32 went on to the physical and mental fitness testing, and seven made it through to become NASA's first group of astronauts on April 9, 1959.

The second group of astronauts joined the space agency on September 17, 1962. They were held to the same basic requirements as the first group but with a few changes. The education requirement was broadened to include all science degrees and the age limit was lowered from 40 to 35. This was also the first group to include civilian pilots, most notably in this group was Neil Armstrong. Armstrong’s crew was followed by a third astronaut class on October 17, 1963, who felt the benefits of some minor changes to the selection process. This time around, candidates were only required to have 1,000 hours flying time and the age limit was lowered 34.

But it wasn’t until the fourth group joined NASA on June 28, 1965 that we saw the first major change in NASA's astronaut corps: the first cohort of scientist-astronauts. Each candidate was required to hold a doctoral degree in natural sciences, medicine, or engineering and the flight requirement was dropped (though all astronauts were trained to fly after joining the space agency).

Through 1969, three more classes of astronauts were added to NASA’s corps, and applicants were eventually saw the age limits raised to 36. The last group was notable for all being part of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, the USAF's own spaceflight program based on NASA's Gemini spacecraft. Although the MOL program never got off the ground, some of its astronauts did as shuttle astronauts.

Then there was a lag. While NASA flew three Skylab missions, one Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission, and developed the space shuttle, no new astronauts joined the agency. It wasn't until 1978, nine years after the seventh group joined, that NASA welcomed its eighth group to the fold, which proved to be a pivotal moment in NASA’s astronaut diversity.

On January 16, 1978, 35 astronauts joined the space agency. With this group, NASA made one major change in its astronaut criteria: It began dividing astronauts into two categories: pilots and mission specialists. Mission specialists are astronauts limited to a certain aspect of a mission like biomedical experiments. But the biggest change was more profound: Of these 35 astronauts, three were African American, one was Asian American, and six were women. Among them was Sally Ride, a PhD student in physics at Stanford when she found herself the centre of attention at a press conference surrounding her selection.

When Ride was assigned to the crew of STS-7 in 1982, she became the center of attention. Chris Kraft, former Apollo flight director and then director of the Johnson Space Centre, offered his unflinching support. The mission's commander Bob Crippen said simply of Ride that "she is flying with us because she is the very best person for the job. There is no man I would rather have in her place." Ride launched June 18, 1983 as mission specialist. The following year on August 30, Ride’s colleague Guion S. “Guy” Bluford became the first African American in space as a mission specialist on STS-8.

Since 1978, NASA has welcomed a new cohort of mixed gender astronauts roughly every other year.

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