Main Engine Cut Off - T+258: The Six, by Loren Grush (Off-Nominal 123 - An Exciting Time)

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Jake and Anthony are joined by Loren Grush of Bloomberg to talk about her new book, The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 34 executive producers—Frank, Chris, Joel, Fred, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut), Steve, David, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com, Kris, Theo and Violet, Joonas, Lee, Bob, Stealth Julian, Pat, SmallSpark Space Systems, Harrison, Benjamin, Lars and Will from Agile Space, Ryan, Dawn Aerospace, Warren, The Astrogators at SEE, Tyler, Russell, Pat from KC, Matt, Jan, Donald, and four anonymous—and 842 other supporters.TopicsOff-Nominal Campaign for Relay FM/St. JudeLoren Grush - BloombergLoren Grush (@grushcrush) • Instagram photos and videosLoren Grush (@lorengrush) / TwitterOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 123 - An Exciting Time (with Loren Grush) - YouTubeThe Six | Book by Loren Grush | Official Publisher Page | Simon & SchusterThe Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy: a conversation with my parents who worked the accident - The VergeThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOFollow @[e-mail] on MastodonListen to MECO HeadlinesListen to Off-NominalJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterArtwork photo by ISROWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo and I've got a little bit of a special show today. Some of you I just know from the numbers. There's a bunch of you that listen to this show that don't listen to the other podcast that I do called Off Nominal. that listen to this show that don't listen to the other podcasts that I do called Off Nominal, offnom.com is where you can find that. We stream live every Thursday at 4 p.m. Eastern for an hour, and then that show comes out later on a podcast feed if you're more of an audio type person. So wherever you're listening to this, you can get Off Nominal. And if you have not checked it out yet, if you're one of those couple thousand people that listen to the show that don't listen to Off Nominal, please check it out because it is a wonderful show i have so much fun doing it with jake robbins my co-host uh and then we bring on guests of all varieties and that's what you got to hear today here because our friend

lauren grush a brilliant writer over at bloomberg formerly at the verge has a new book coming out next week called the six it is about the first six women selected by nasa to be astronauts it is a an amazing book. I loved reading it. I know if you're listening to this, you're going to love reading this as well. It comes out next week, and I wanted to have her on our shows, but I didn't want to take up more time from her than, you know, it's a wild schedule when you've got a book coming out.

So basically grabbed an hour with her on Off Nominal, where she announced the existence of the book three years ago. So it felt right to have her on Off Nominal, where she announced the existence of the book three years ago. So it felt right to have her on Off Nominal. But I want to put this conversation here for you as well. So for those of you that have not checked out Off Nominal yet, please enjoy exploring what that show is like, but also hearing what Lauren's book is like, because it is truly wonderful. And I really implore you to go check it out.

Comes out September 12th. Pre-orders really matter for authors, so if you're planning on reading it, pre-orders definitely help at your favorite location. But before we get into the show, I want to say thank you to all of the supporters of Main Engine Cutoff. Thanks to Frank, Chris, Joel, Fred, Tim Dodd, David Ashtonot, Steve, David, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com,

Chris, Theo and Violet, Eunice, Lee, Bob, Stealth Julian, Pat, SmallSpark Space Systems, Harrison, Benjamin, Lars and Will from Agile Space, Ryan, Dawn Aerospace, Warren, The Astrogators, SCE, Tyler, Russell, Pat from KC, Matt, Ian, Donald, and four anonymous producers. They are the executive producers of this episode of Main Engine Cutoff. There are 34 executive producers and 842 others over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. If you like what I'm doing here, head over there and help support the show. I am hugely thankful. But honestly, this week, spend your money on Lauren. And one other thing that I'll tell you about at the start of this

show here. So enjoy. Hey, everyone, we had such a good time with our friend Lauren here and her amazing new book that we totally forgot to plug a fundraiser that we're throwing our support behind every September. Our friends at relay FM, they run a bunch of different podcasts. Uh, I listened to a ton of their shows, their great shows every September. They run a fundraiser for St.

Jude's children's research hospital down in Memphis. Uh, you may remember them on the space beat from the hospital that was supported by inspiration for the Polaris program at all. They, uh uh do a ton of research and care for kids with cancer uh it's an amazing cause and relay does an amazing fundraiser every year for it uh so we're throwing our support behind we've got a paid setup off nom.com slash donate that will go to this tiltify platform that they're using to do the fundraising. And you can support the off-nominal little sub-campaign there.

It all feeds into the RelayFM fundraising campaign. We're not getting any money out of this. It's all going to St. Jude. But we have this little fundraiser page set up so that our community can climb the leaderboards of Relay's fundraiser here. We're sitting at number five right now overall, and $1,000 will put us up to essentially number one behind the RelayFM team themselves. And we set up a fun little goal. So we put our goal at 1% of Relay's overall goal. So we only have to get just about $3,000 or about halfway there. This is a admittedly very low goal for what our community has done in the past in

terms of fundraising. So I know we can blast through this. But if and when we hit that goal, Jake and I are going to do a really fun show, which is the what did we refer to it as last week? I probably don't even remember the name, but the Terrible Space Movie Review Show. We are going to watch a bunch of really bad, terrible, terrible sci fi shows. Jake loves these things. I'm a little more skeptical of them. We're going to watch them. We're going to watch them. We're going to review them. We're going to have Stephen Hackett of Relay FM on October 19th on the show. And I don't know if we'll make him watch the shows, the movies.

He might want to. If not, we will give him the pitch and pick which one is his favorite. It'll be a great time. But we've got to hit the goal to do that. So offnom.com slash donate. Check it out and support St. Jude. It is an awesome cause. Thanks.

TLS and go for main engine, start. Go at throttle up. Negative return. And we see a nominal Miko. Welcome to space. Hello, friends. Happy Thursday. Happy almost book launch week.

Lauren Grush, how's it going? It's going good. It's an exciting time. That's the phrase I've been using when I feel overwhelmed. A friend of mine told me, it's not a busy time. It's an exciting time. This is every author's favorite part of the book tour, where you have to talk with schmucks like us just nonstop. No way. This is the podcast I had to do. I announced that I was writing the book on Off nominal. Oh my God. Three years ago.

Jeez. It's been an interview long time in the making. We have to say that that's for sure. How long ago that was. Yeah. I mean, I guess in the book you mentioned that the general timeframe at which you were writing all this,

uh, man, it's Jake. I know. I think I was a little ahead of you in the reading process, but that's a fricking great book. It's such a good, it's good.

So far. I saw full disclosure. It's just counting in case the back half sucks. Oh no. Okay. So full disclosure, I had like a, I,

one of those like terrible, no good, very bad weeks. And I just like all my reading time evaporated this week. So I'm only like a quarter in. So all my questions are going to be about the first two, three chapters. It's fine. Anthony's much, much the end i think i have like a handful of pages left because i went back to read a section and didn't finish the last few pages but it's uh yeah so it's good

it's it's the longest book that we ever did homework for on off nominal i'll say that oh wow yeah i mean it i i always say it say it really is like writing six different biographies. And I couldn't even fit in the full amount. It really only covers their first space flights and the Challenger accident. And obviously, that is a very small portion of their careers and their professional lives. So there was plenty more to cover that I just could not cover in this book alone. Well, you can write a sequel. Yeah. I'm sure you're ready for that. I've got a thousand things I want to talk about. So first, we should find out, Lauren Grush, on the week of your launch or the pre-week of your launch. Are you drinking fancy drinks or do you have too much to do?

too much to do um i have a special heb brand central market um kombucha promoting active gut health as i have a lot i have a lot going on and so i don't think i have the luxury of really drinking too much at this stage it's an exciting time can't be it's an exciting time oh no is this going to be the title of the show it is i it is. I mean, it's supposed to come out with something really good, but that seems like a really favorite. You have plenty of time to improve upon. Odds are good. Yeah. If we had to end it right now,

that's probably what it would be called. Right. My friend will be proud. Yeah, yeah. Jake, what you got down there? Did you make something in the storm or were you fighting with the internet too much to make a fun drink?

No, I'm keeping it simple. I don't know how often i've done wine on this show i got a glass of wine i feel like only once ever very simple there's nothing fancy about this a little bit of vino blanco marquez de valle so yeah i'm gonna make a risotto later so i had to open this anyway and i'm like you know what i'm just gonna drink a glass so later. So I had to open this anyway. And I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to drink a glass. So you can't get too carried away. You have to save a little for dinner. Yeah, exactly.

I only need like a cup though. So it's good. The rest of the bottle is ready to go. The reserve is not that much that you need. That is always a risky. You should cook first and drink after, but that's fair enough. Yeah. I've got a,

I've got a special victory blend called the road to victory seeing how is uh the start of football here in america jake so the eagles are playing this weekend everyone's apparently selling special beer for it so go birds cool go birds birds dot makeup yeah go birds dot makeup Cool. Go birds. Go birds. Birds.makeup. Go birds.makeup. Let's leave that one hanging. Tell someone else to watch it. Oh, man.

All right. I've got some things. So when you announced this on the show, I feel like you French good-byed us and did it like right at the end of the show. And we never even talked about the inspiration behind the book or like how long you've been on this particular topic. And then how you even like by the time that you said that on the show, did you kind of figure out how you were going to approach this? Or was it just like, oh, no, that's a good idea. kind of figure out how you were going to approach this? Or was it just like, oh, no, that's a good idea? Yeah, no, I can definitely give some insight into the book pitching process as well,

because mine I felt was particularly a little chaotic. But yeah, no, I've been wanting to write a book for a while. I feel like that's most journalistic ambitions. And, you know, it was always important to me. And I hope it shows in the work that I do that I really like to center women in space, you know, especially as a woman reporting on space. I've one of the best things about this job. And one of the things I cherish above all is all of the other female space reporters that I've met. And some of them I call my closest friends. And, you know, it's just a nice little camaraderie. Obviously, it's gotten much more equal. But, you know, it's still a pretty male dominated field. And so it is really great to have those

connections with other women reporting on this. And so, you know, that's that's just always been important to me in terms of the types of stories that I like to do, you know, centering women's voices. And then so that made me think, you know, okay, well, what about the women who were first? Obviously, there were first female space reporters and there were first female astronauts. And I'll be honest, I didn't really know much other than the name Sally Ride, you know. know much other than the name Sally Ride, you know? And when I went back and I learned about this first group, you know, I just some really early digging, you know, I realized, oh, it could have been any one of the six of them. And that I just am really fascinated by because then you get

into the what ifs and the alternate history and, you know, what if it had gone the other way and, you know, Judy had been picked first or Anna had been picked first instead. And, you know, then the history of books would be completely different. And how would that, what kind of, you know, chain reaction event would that have had for, you know, history moving forward? I imagine a lot of people don't actually know much about this group. And so really it was about educating me and others through the research process. And then in terms of pitching the book, oh boy, that was really fun. I don't know if you remember summer of 2020, but that was an exciting time. but that was a that was an exciting time um so uh obviously we were all cooped up in during the pandemic and uh we were just coming off of dm2 if i recall correctly and uh then we had a bunch of mars missions because you can only launch to Mars during certain windows. And I remember... During pandemic.

So it's like... Yeah. Okay. So we had the proposal ready and we had sent it out that summer. And I remember, you know, sorry to The Verge, but they know now, you know. I was taking Zoom calls with publishers and then in between launch windows for Mars. So I would cover Perseverance's launch and then while we were waiting for them to deploy, I'd go do a pitch meeting and then I would come back and cover this, you know, a solar deployment or something like that. So, you know, just the life of a, of a space reporter, but ultimately worked out.

And now we, here we are three years later. Let's do early plug. Wait, Jake, we didn't even say the book title or anything yet. We need to plug it up front. Yes. Okay. The six is what it's called. of course um you want to put it up on the screen so we can see isn't it here on the screen make a little make it a little bigger so we can see here's the cover it looks awesome there we go uh it's an epic cover and uh the plug that i always do every time we have a friend running anything uh way of book sales. Pre-orders are very huge because all the pre-orders get counted on launch day.

So pre-order right now. It's an amazing book. You're going to want to read it. We're going to talk about it all show, but pre-order it now because it will make Lauren's day when it goes live on September 12th. September 12th. A very, a very active day. Turns out.

Yeah. It's a big day for books. So, you know, maybe we can get you to number two at least with all the pre-orders. That would be great. Because there's definitely no geopolitical situations that will hog the number one slot. You know, none of the women astronauts turned off access to drones in Ukraine. Did they ever fiddle with wars or is that not really the thing? Not that I'm aware of. There was the one timeally ride launched a missile

while in lunar orbit oh are you referencing for all mankind spoilers i guess if you haven't seen a show from years ago at this point but um you know how much that show has brought up to me and i'm terrible i haven't seen it because you know my common refrain is as a space reporter i seek out non-space media when i'm done totally uh so i haven't really spent time with for all mankind but i really must i'm clearly missing out oh i dropped a headphone earphone jake okay so i have a question about this pitch because um i'm curious about the timeframe being the pandemic, because everyone in their damn dog was writing a book during the pandemic, because what else could you do? Right? So like, was it was it harder to even get anything like

going because of that? Or? Oh, it was, I constantly said I did it on difficult mode. You know, everybody was saying how, like you said, oh, it's the COVID pandemic, we're all at home, we have all this time on our hands. You know, it's the perfect time to write your novel. And definitely not your perfect time to write a nonfiction book, because all of the archives were closed. And they were closed for years. And so I did primarily most of my research online. I gave a shout out to Paul at the New York Public Library. He walked me through the very bizarre research system that they have in order to pull articles and magazines. there was even a way to like request magazine covers through this very awkward process and they can, they would scan it to you and send you, you know, a picture of it

in your email. It was, it was, it was really special. Um, and then, you know, I also, you know, NASA has some stuff online and there's a, there's great stuff at archive.org you know some of the air to ground transcripts are there which i was able to get um but then also you know i i'll turn to other kind of um i don't want to call them amateur but you know professional nasa collectors if you will uh they've been amassing their own archives of material. It's the longest way to say Robert Perlman. It's the longest way to say his name. Yes. But it wasn't just Rob.

I mean, Rob pointed me to quite a few people who have been, you know, collecting things on their own and have their own, you know, mini archives in their home. So I give shout outs to them in the book as well. And then I wound up having to FOIA Freedom of Information Act a few materials from NASA because I really wanted Sally Ride's press conference in video form, which I do now have. And it is just as fantastic and as cringy as you could possibly imagine. And just to see the look on her face, you know, when she's being asked these questions is really priceless.

So, yeah, it was a lot of being very creative in terms of, you know, how I went about finding things. But I'm hoping it, you know, sets me up for success next time I do a project like this. The thing that I could not stop thinking about the whole book was like damn this feels like lauren was like alongside them the entire time that they were going through this and i'm like the thing i wanted to say most of the show is how incredible of writing it is when knowing that like you were born after the majority of the stuff in the book like the fact

that you were able to, I don't know if you feel like you, you like had an alternate personality that descended back into the seventies and eighties and we're like living that era, but it just reads like you were there the whole time. It's amazing. It's so wild that you say that because one of the things I did feel like is I would get into these hours long discussions with the astronauts, part of the TFNGs, the 35 new guys, or the effing new guys if you want to refer to their actual term. But they would just, I mean, their minds were just as sharp and they knew, they remembered things so vividly and they would just kind of lapse into these stories. And it really did feel like being

a fly on the wall during training or during their classes or while they were in the flights themselves. And so I really did feel like the luckiest person alive, like I was this little ghost, you know, along for the ride back in the 80s. Yeah, no, you can definitely see that in the writing. Like I liked especially the kind of the way you can bounce around between the stories in a way that feels not jarring, because that, like you said, it's hard to write. It's six biographies in one and it's hard to do that. That's not the easiest biography to write is six at a time. So I kind of liked how, yeah, it felt not hard to just kind of like, it's like,

oh, this part of the story is about getting the call and sort of bouncing between them and seeing what that looks like felt very natural. So yeah, totally, totally good chops there. Those are my favorite moments. I kind of refer to them as like flashbulb moments because, you know, there are those, those events that each one of them had a vivid memory for or could recall very easily. And so it was really easy to place them when those were happening, such as, you know, getting the call, you know, where they were on the day they were presented to the press, you know, where they were for the day they were presented to the press, where they were for the Challenger accident. And so those were just, I mean, I don't want to say easy, but they were just very vivid accounts that I enjoyed telling. And then also as I was researching, some of the parts I really

enjoyed was finding out how maybe one person's flight or malfunction, you know, had this outsized impact on somebody else. So a big example is Judy Resnick's abort, you know, that while obviously you're very concerned about how that's impacting Judy, then you realize, oh, it actually had this impact on Ray as well, who was, you know, further down the line for her flight. And so Greg Jarvis, like, yeah, well, yeah, right. Yeah, absolutely. And it and that's one of those things, you know, it's always very eerie when you're looking back at history. It's like, oh, if this hadn't happened, what would have happened? You can play that game all day long, but you know, it is really, you know, fascinating to kind of uncover, you know, uh, uh,

turn over those rocks and be like, Oh wow, this is actually this, this is how this is connected. And, and I would have not never realized that otherwise. It's the fact that you're like this timeframe away from that era is really interesting too, because it's history, but it's still like, most of the people are still around or were around very recently in the way that like all the space history books are about the same 10 people back in the 60s it's so fun to read not that era and like you're saying you know everyone knows sally ride not that many people know these other people

and being like in their stories is just it's much, it's just such an interesting moment in culture from not only NASA changing from the Apollo era into the new era, but like the world changing around it. And, uh, I mean the fact that like Mohammed bin Salman's brother was on the one flight, I forgot that their brothers, it's like a weird, you know, it's, there's so many odd things like that are still relevant in the world today that are tied back to that era. It's such a bizarre. And of course, us being born in or shortly thereafter that era, we don't have a deep knowledge of being there day to day to pick up on all that stuff. Yeah.

And also, I would say that it very much reminded me of the era that I knew from NASA. So obviously, you know, I grew up with the space shuttle program. My parents were very involved in the space shuttle. And so it really felt like witnessing the birth of that era that i knew so well obviously it was quite different by the time i was born and and growing up um but it still felt very familiar yeah for me um as a child it's like generational right how those things happen so there's certain culture that clicks into place for 10 or 20 years and then there's a new thing that happens and that's right takes place for the next 10 or 20 years so yeah it definitely you look back and you're like there were these major moments in the shuttle program but it had a vibe the whole time you know it was a very similar vibe this this astronaut class was really the kickoff of the second age of nasa right like you know if you think of the first age it says getting to the moon and you know mercury gemini apollo and then this this

started the next one right which we stayed in for 40 years so like it's uh it's i didn't realize ass cans was the thing only in that era like the yeah that's where that started did you get any i don't know how deep you got into the existence of that but that just felt like oh you're just doing a gatekeepery thing thing now that there's all the new guys? I mean, yeah, it was just kind of, it was fascinating to learn the origin of that. And also, you know, just little things that I hadn't really considered before, you know, when astronauts came on during the Apollo program in the early days of this, of NASA, they were just astronauts. And this was the first time that they came on, you know, they're in this probation period, if you will. And also, I had always really had some kind of idea of the mission specialist role, because, you know, that is something that we have, we've had for some time.

But I didn't, you know, it wasn't until I really started digging into this, that I learned that that was created specifically for the space shuttle. And that role is really what we have to thank for allowing women to come into the program like they did. And so it's just, you know, very little things that you take for granted now, but then you realize. Oh, we thought Jake's internet was going to be out. oh we thought jake's internet was going to be out we'll see we'll see if she makes it back oh no oh you're back we hear you again you're coming back there you are you're back you're good maybe she's back maybe she's back and doesn't even know it maybe she doesn't know she's back yeah oh we're all gonna awkwardly stand there you were i think you got through the ass cans part but i don't know to me it felt like the gatekeeping is a topic of space flight forever

in random ways and this felt like the origins of gatekeeping in space to me whereas now it's like oh women can't fly planes all right i guess now they can fly spaceships or 747s without having flown a plane before and then it was like oh astronauts have to go through training and now we're in the era of like uh i guess everyone's an astronaut and gatekeeping has just been a fundamental way of life for like 50 years so and i think sorry i'm back now so i'm just gonna chime in with you know bullshit the the thing that i really one of my biggest takeaways from this book is everything we have to do with space all comes down to choice right you know the way we design our spacecraft

ultimately dictates who can fly it right but those are choices that engineers make and we can make different choices that are more inclusive. The criteria that we set for astronauts is, that's all choice that we make because we think it has to be that way, but we can change that criteria. And look, we did, and look what happened. You know, we've, we found even more amazing astronauts than ever before. So, you know, it's, it's really, that's, that's why I say it's important to keep inclusivity top of mind because it dictates the choices that you make and it makes it more inclusive and more accessible to everyone. And then you find people like Sally Ride who never considered being an astronaut until she saw that she could be one, you know, and that's, there's going to be so many people like that who don't think it's for

them until you tell them that it is and then they realize oh i'm in the right position to do it and then you find somebody great yeah there's also the skill set drift that happens like you know the astronauts you need today and the things they need to know are different than yesterday and tomorrow like in 10 years we're just going to need a shitload of people that are really good at resetting wi-fi routers because they're going to go out on the bases and no one's going to know how to work them. But you got to, like, be able to go in and do some DNS stuff. So the IT crowd is coming. They're going to put, you know, the router, you know, like outside of the airlock.

So you'll have to suit up. You know, it'll be like, oh, I have to go outside again to set the router. I have to go outside again to set the router. I think it's interesting too, like to, so the mission specialist thing, you know, like you said, it started with that program. It wasn't before. And I think it's a good reminder to me about how like the, the program before shuttle. So Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, that whole era, it feels so like official and powerful it's hard to for

like it's it's easy to forget that that was very much like flying by the seat of our pants and like everything was made up and it's like we need astronauts what should it be i don't know i'll just go and grab some fighter pilots let's go let's go let's go like and like you're hired now you're an astronaut go to space like you know there was no structure or regimen to any of the processes. Right. And it turns out that every time you do that, like the less process you have, the more biases take, take control. Right. So it's like, makes perfect sense that, that there were no women back there because like there was, you, you know, you need a structure to kind of create safe places for that kind of thing to happen. Right. And there wasn't one. yeah it's interesting for sure but i will say that also one thing that did surprise me was a

little lack of structure when the early days of the space shuttle program as well um you know when one of the themes throughout the book is kind of just how increasingly relaxed, you know, perceived maybe, but also, also real realized as well. Um, NASA became with some of the requirements and, you know, obviously, um, they, you know, there's a lot of discussion about what ultimately led to the Challenger accident, but there were just a lot of things that they allowed back then that, you know, when I was growing up with a space shuttle and my parents were working on it, you know, that that would have never flown. So that was, that was also interesting to learn, to see how, um, a little more of a relaxed environment it was back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Cause that, you know, especially in the first few years of the shuttle,

like the tone must've just been so different before challenger you know like just just the whole concept of it and there was so much enthusiasm to try and make make space just like easygoing normal like not a big deal just go in a space for the week i'll be back later like they really wanted it to be so much like not exceptional and then of course that must have you know made some decisions for them yeah yeah absolutely they were still in the era where they were going to fly 50 times a year 50 times a year that was the plan and you know they were going to fly a journalist you know that was a scrapped plan before they were, I mean, I learned this before I researched the book, but when I found out that politicians flew on the space shuttle for the first time, that blew my mind because knowing what I knew about the shuttle back when I was growing up, you know, that just seemed completely outrageous. um but to learn that and and not only that politicians flew but they were working on flying a journalist obviously i knew about the teacher flying you know it's just it was just a very different era um back when uh you know they really hadn't had it all figured out just yet

when your second reaction to the politicians thing was like that guy should run nasa that's who that she should that was my reaction you should run nasa but like way later like not like yeah you should wait a long time forever then yeah what a weird era um the other big there was a major component to the book throughout the era that jake's reading and through the launches the launch storylines is there the astronauts interactions with the media and like it yeah i mean 85 of the book like if you're somewhat of my particular bent you're just like really mad at people for being so dumb about everything oh yeah i know i'm so mad already god i know well like for 8,000 reasons.

Like, the beginning of the book, when several of these ladies were in medical training, I was like, boy, that's been my life for, like, 10 years. And, you know, people not understanding how that works. And then the other aspect of, like, the weird biases around parenting in that era and how, like, there was no expectations on dads and all expectations on moms. I'm like, as a very involved dad, I'm offended at this point that like

this is not a thing that anyone's worried about. But the common thread throughout is the dumb questions they get at press conferences and how good all of them were at not only like jabbing back, but doing so in ways that my wife was very annoyed how much i was laughing reading this book at night while she was trying to fall asleep uh and i'm i'm trying to like i don't know that era is not a thing anymore i feel like the communications are so totally boring to be honest like to the point at which i'm like i, Jake and I have no interest in interviewing current astronauts because it just feels like we'll get a list of things that they're allowed to say and we have to figure out which ones we want to make them say. So from, you know, you having taken a dive into this era,

also being a journalist, what was your take on those interactions and how it all went back then? Well, yeah, I feel like as I do publicity for this book, I'm kind of on an apology tour for all of the press that came before me. Because that was, I was really, I mean, obviously there was some friction with people at NASA. But above all, they really made bringing, opening up the astronaut program a priority. And that was reflected in many of the people that were there at the time.

It was really the press that was the one that kind of, they held up the mirror to society, I think, and just kind of how we hadn't really come that, I mean, we'd come far along, but it was still this novelty, you know, for many people in the public and the press. And so, yeah, it was just a lot of cringing as I would go through these headlines, you know, obviously I was, you know, anytime I found a headline or, um, or a story about them, it was like a little gold nugget. And then I would read about it. I'd read it further and I would be like, oh my God, did they really ask that question? Or did they really point out their weight? Did they really point out their single? It was just kind of like, oh, ah, just brutal. I mean, even from the very beginning when they were first introduced,

you know, somebody asked if Shannon's three children were taken into consideration when she was chosen. And it's just, you know, it's just wild to think that that was, you know, and even at the time he did, that person acknowledged, I think it was a sexist or chauvinist pig question or something like that. But yeah. I'm going to ask it anyway, because that's what the readers need. acknowledged i think it was a sexist or chauvinist pig question or something like that um but yeah ask it anyway because yeah i'm gonna ask the readers need yeah the readers need to know this

answer to this chauvinist pig question so yeah it was um the it was their odyssey with the press that i think i hate to say it was the biggest villain in the story, you know? No, totally, yeah. And they handled it all so well. I mean, for Sally- Well, that's the thing, though. In the selection process, there was never like, let's find who has the driest wit in media interactions. And they all ended up with hilarious one-liners in this book. And that was something that Anna had said at one point was,

it was like overnight she would, from a medical doctor with zero experience and with the media to all of a sudden a public figure. And she just had to know how to handle it. There were, there was no training, there was no preparation. It was like all of a sudden you're selected and now cameras are in your face. And I can't even imagine how terrifying that must've been. Um, you know, just because it, it, you can be the smartest person ever and you can still come across not well if you don't know how to interact with the media.

And so the fact that they did come across so well, I think is just incredible. And it speaks to, you know, just how amazing they were and how right they were for the job. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in fairness, I imagine that women in that time had lots of experience answering really cringy questions. They may not have had formal training, but they had lots of life experience that they could whip out at

a moment's notice. Yeah, quite possibly. That's a really good point. Because yeah, I mean, some of the stuff probably hits our ears like, who would ever ask that? Right. No, but they were probably being asked. Well, I mean, look at Shannon's story. I mean, Shannon's story is the one that as I was writing it, I would just get angrier and angrier. Because, you know, she grew up, she was slightly older than the rest. But those few years that she had on the rest of the group just shows the generational difference that she was dealing with. She just wanted to have a job in chemistry when she

graduated. And she just constantly met with people telling her she wouldn't get a job, wouldn't hire her because she was a woman, or if she did get hired, it was part-time and she definitely wouldn't get paid the same as her male colleagues. You know, so I'm sure and even Shannon told me that NASA proved to be kind of like this beacon of hope for her because she was expecting people to make snotty comments like they did her whole life. And she was pleasantly surprised when that was not the case. her whole life and she was pleasantly surprised when that was not the case so yeah it's they've been dealing with this in some form or another for most of their life leading up to it yeah yeah the nasa bit i feel like there were you know there's this stuff has gotten some coverage because i think even in the show you haven't watched for all mankind like had some of these scenes in it where john glenn was just generally being a shithead about the first women.

But, and there was, you know, other people within NASA that felt similarly from like Deke Slayton to Chris Kraft. And then I feel like something changed pretty quickly in the timeline of the book, but you did not have the time to get that deep into that particular,

like six month period of time. But are you able to suss out? It just seemed in the book, reading it, it happened very quickly that people internal to nasa there were still you know dumb jokes and weird comments and stuff but the general acceptance flipped a bit i would say well so basically i think it what happened is the tone was set from the start. So when the Apollo program or when Kennedy challenged the US to beat the Soviets to the moon, that really set the agenda for what the space program was going to be for the foreseeable future. And so ultimately what I learned was that the sentiment was that if anything detracted from that goal, if anything

was seen as slowing us down, it was seen as a distraction. And so that's ultimately what NASA and others viewed incorporating women into the program back in the early 60s. So the issue, and I think you all can back me up here, is when you set the tone at NASA, that tone stays for a while. And it takes a while to change and to evolve and, the world around it was changing. And so the civil rights movement happened, the feminist movement happened. And then, you know, it was in the 70s that NASA was starting to get questions. You know, why hasn't a woman gone to space? You know, why haven't there been people of color that have gone to space? And so it was, I think it started to build and build and build. And that's when it really, it was something they couldn't ignore anymore. And there's a, you know, little details about Ruth Bates Harris and her work, you know,

you know, determining the level of diversity inclusion at NASA, which at the time was, you know, abysmal. I think there's a great line. I never remember it, but it was something like NASA sent like three women into space. was a spider two or monkeys two were spiders one was monkey yeah yeah yeah i read that more recently than you did so take that take that with you into the junket okay um yeah so it was i think the the problem was you know they had just they had put themselves on a bad course from the start. And then it was, as the world changed, they realized they could not hide from this question anymore. And also, you know, we weren't in that space race at the time, which obviously isn't a good excuse, but, you know, I think the, the national security implications and the, uh, national international dominance kind of

part of the equation was gone. And so, um, that may have also helped, but like I said, not an excuse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was wild to see, like I knew about the John Glenn thing, you know, that story where he got up in front of the senate and said women belong in the kitchen kind of thing um but the you know hearing basically what he said basically yeah it's very different yeah it's like the men go off and fight the wars and great bread yeah so i like i knew about that one it's's a pretty well-known story. Boy, would have he loved the pandemic. Yeah. But it was interesting to see some of the other figures, which I could probably surmise that people from that era, that they had certain views.

But I didn't have any quotes from, like you said, Dee Slayton and Chris Kraft and George Lowe and different people like that that just names that I knew, and have always been a part of the narrative for me. And then just like, kind of putting that light was like, that makes sense that they would say that, even when you think it's like, I'm not really surprised, even though I didn't know about this. But also, like, it's just sort of, sort of interesting to make sure that we're kind of recasting them into different lights, right? And so that was a. Just a reminder that, you know, never have heroes. No, I'm kidding. Totally.

But seriously, like, I feel like they're good examples, but I feel like those are actually good examples of, of like being victims of your cultural moment. Right. Because like you said, like run the clock 10 years forward and Chris Kraft was like, these ladies are great. Like, this is wonderful. Absolutely. And John Glenn worked with many women moving forward. And I'm sure if we confronted him with that, that line that he said in front, you know, during that congressional hearing, he probably would have, you know, hated it. So, yeah, obviously, we're all evolving. We're all changing. We're all products of our cultural time. we're all evolving. We're all changing. We're all products of our cultural time. But yeah,

you know, it just goes to show that this was an uphill battle for many. And even when the women came into the program, not everybody was on board, you know, and there's a few instances of that in the book. Additionally, some of the women, the wives of the astronauts were not too keen on them being there either. So it just goes to show that when we put these really big societal barriers in place, it just takes a very long time to break them down. Yeah. Sometimes you just have to wait for the right people to die, unfortunately. Like the lady that wrote into the Philadelphia Inquirer in the book. Shout out. Oh, yeah.

Shout out, Inquirer. out inquirer of course you would recognize philly for sure i was like oh the inquirer got a shout out in this the one newspaper they got a named shout out uh was this dumb letter to the editor of some lady saying i don't think this is right so i think that was uh also commenting on a photo of our friend Kristen Fisher, who was around for a lot of cool moments, turns out. I know, I know. It is funny because, you know, whenever I would write about her, you know, her face comes to mind. But, you know, she was a little baby in this book. And so it was interesting picturing her now as I was writing about her.

I mean, I was even writing about her when she was in the womb, you know. So it was a very, very big, very great origin story. Can you talk about sort of the, we mentioned the sort of living history aspect of this, where it's like in the past, but it's still very kind of present. You know, so you would have had access to some people who you were directly writing about, and then some people who were have, you know, are not around anymore. And that must have been made it kind of interesting, especially with the symmetry with the six astronauts, like, you know, like, how did you balance that to make sure you were you had the same quality of narrative

for each one of them? Yeah, I mean, I hate to admit it, but I probably spent more time with people like Judy and Sally just because, you know, finding about them was really a bit like doing detective work. You know, it was finding things that they would say in the press, people who remembered them. It was really kind of piecing them together from memories. And, you know, the, and the hard part about them was that, you know, they didn't like talking to the press. So Judy, you know, there's, there's, in fact, there's one interview with her that I found that's really hilarious because you can hear the disdain in the interviewers writing about how little she's getting from Judy. Cause there's one point where she's saying, um, you know, she asked Judy a question and Judy gives like one

word answer and she goes, ah, a smile, you know, like, like she just got some, you know, she finally pried a smile out of her, you know? And so, but you know, and, and that, in that way that speaks volumes about Judy, right. You know, and the kind of person that she was. And so when you take that with some of the other personality traits that people would tell you about them, you know, you can kind of create this picture, but that part was really interesting because it was, yeah, it was like kind of, I was like going back in time and trying to uncover clues that are very very hard to find yeah um

did you have any like any aha big surprises in your research like i always like to know like because you know like most people go into a book like this knowing like straight up like i want to write this because i know some stuff about it and it's interesting. And I want to write that down and make a thing out of it. Right. So like sometimes the people that go into this are already the best learned in that subject.

Right. So I would like to know what was the, like the thing the most where you're just like, holy shit, like this is a real thing that happened. And then like immediately you got to write it in there. Like what's the thing for that. Right.

I think the biggest was learning about the intricacies of their shuttle flights. You know, obviously when you hear STS-7 or STS, you know, 41G or whatever, you just hear, oh, they went to space, you know, but really getting to dive into what the mission parameters are. And then what I really loved is when they, something didn't go according to plan. So Ray's flight is really fun for me because I called it the heist because it really was, they had to kind of work, they had to completely upend their plans and work together to come up with this entirely new set of parameters. And they did the first, you know, unplanned spacewalk on their mission. So, you know, and they did it all with the congressman aboard,

which is a whole nother feat. They did, they did, yeah. That's a good kicker, yeah. So that, and then, you know, Judy's flight, for instance, learning about the abort. And then that was a moment that was really fun because the people that were on board for that scenario really vividly remember it. And so those are, you know, as a writer, those are the most fun to,

to write about because you have such rich, vivid detail to draw from. Um, and yeah, so, and also what's funny is, you know, how people viewed a pad abort back then, you know, whereas we deal with pad aborts all the time. Yeah. We're like, oh, go back to bed for a couple hours. Yeah, exactly. Or like, oh, we'll come back tomorrow. But that was a major moment for this, for the shuttle program and just how people reacted to it. And, and, you know, that I, that I found fascinating. So those were kind of the aha moments. And then, you know, just moments where people really have, like I said, that flashbulb memory I really loved. You know, there's a great scene where John Fabian, one of Sally's and Shannon's crewmates, talks about, he vividly remembers his last day and how it was New Year's Eve and he took Sally up in the T-38 and they flew together and did all sorts of tricks and flips and stuff and how beautiful of a moment that was. So whenever I was able to like really reach deep into someone's memory,

that was really beautiful and lovely for me. Yeah. The shuttle program is great for exactly what you just described there they sort of like unearthing the details of something because it was so vast like so many flights of the shuttle right like i mean if you think about apollo there's plenty of people listening to this show that could rattle off every crew member for every apollo flight in order no problem right and they they can tell you the the general vibe of each apollo flight but then like you just pluck some random shuttle like if i just say like sts-72 and like who who was on that no idea no clue yeah no idea who's on that right and it's like these these like lost missions that are like you can you know there's so many you can just go back and like unpack one and go like wow they did some cool stuff like you know there's like a shuttle flight where they built like a

huge like trust structure out of the bay, just like practice in space manufacturing and like all sorts of weird stuff like that you don't really hear about anymore. So they're really fun for me about, you know, just reading about them at least. Absolutely. And that was, that was special for me because I even, I had that as a kid, I very much did not appreciate each shuttle flight. You know, the shuttle flights to me were something my parents had to wake up for at three in the morning. And then, you know, I wouldn't see them for the rest of the day. And then they'd have to do that same thing again when it landed. You know, that it really whatever whatever they were doing in space, whatever the mission was, it really did.

It paled in comparison to just getting the thing off the ground and landing it. And so, yeah, it was really such a treat to kind of dive into each of these week-long missions and go into the details and just learn, you know, what they were doing. And I hope it showed, those were my favorite parts of the book to write i really each of those chapters and getting to sink my teeth and each one of their space flights um it was it was really fulfilling yeah um on the topic of your parents kurt asked a while ago about your parents having worked on shuttle and i feel like we've talked about this before on the show we might have just referenced your amazing conversation with them a couple of years back now about Columbia that I will link to in the show notes. But do you want to do a little previously on Lauren's interface with the shuttle

program? Yeah, sure. So yeah, my parents have only worked on the shuttle for their entire careers. My mother was the deputy orbiter chief engineer, and my father headed up the propulsion branch at JSC before he retired. And yeah, they were both very involved in the Columbia investigation. And yeah, it was some, I don't think they worked on anything else. You know, they retired after, once the shuttle program ended, it really left a very big void in their lives. And so that ultimately led to their retirement. But, you know, they had very fulfilling careers. And I grew up right outside JSC, went to, you know, NASA space camp, or there's like a NASA preschool that I went to just filled with NASA babies. And they also had like a NASA

summer camp where you would, we would do, I mean, the nerdiest things like, you know, science fair and whatnot to keep us, keep us occupied during the summer. Which astronauts handed out full-size candy bars for Halloween? That's all I want to know. That's the NASA trivia I want. You know what? I honestly didn't know that many astronauts. Think on that and report back.

Yeah. Submit that to the record later. Okay, I will. I'll go back. I'll get those details for you. One aspect I'm curious to get your take on now that we're in 2023, hopefully on the verge of a bunch of other firsts regarding the moon in particular uh another aside from the media being weird another topic of the

book is like being first sucks it's the worst and it's just hard to think about being that person uh yeah have you talked to anyone that may become a first in the near future or do you plan to, and would you pass any particular advice along from the eighties to now? Well, I think, I mean, I'm hope I've talked to one of the first, I mean, I've talked to many of the astronauts, uh, at NASA and I hope that one of them I've spoken to will be the first to walk on the moon. But I think the lesson of the book is that, you know, these women had to go first so that the ones who came after will have it easier. And, you know, unfortunately, Sally was the one that had to deal with the brunt of that. But, you know, they really did pick well because she handled it very gracefully.

And, you know, even though she would run away at times, you know, it was necessary in order to survive. And, you know, so hopefully by her going first and by these six women going first, you know, the first woman on the moon won't get the question of, you know, what is your, you know, why are you leaving your daughter to go do this? You know, that'll hopefully be- How many tampons did you bring to the moon? Yeah. Yeah. How many? Is it different? Because it's only one sixth gravity or? Yeah. No, no, no need to, no need to ask. We don't need to get into it. So, yeah. And I'm sure there will be some, you know, and I'm probably already, you know, guilty of this,

but definitely the first woman who does get picked to go to the moon, and I'm sure Christina Cook already has it as well, is, you know, the how does it feel question that that i don't think is going gonna go away it's always such a dumb question and literally any instance that that could ever be asked like you just won the super bowl how does it feel probably like the other 50 times that this has happened and you ask that question like just go back and figure that one out and ask me a better question try again it's a great point actually astronaut interviews and sports interviews are about the same level i could do them all i could do them all if you give me the scenario like i just stepped off of

sts 72 i could do the interview 100 my wife katie hates when i dub sports interviews like they'll be on tv and i'll start asking questions and i'll just i'll do one you know and she gets that but i find it hilarious because they're all the same they're all the same yeah so i know we're just gonna go out there and play our game you know we're gonna go put you know put our body on the puck and i mean we gotta score a little bit more than they do and you know but we try our best like everything's good really yeah that's some of the guys probably guys we're just gonna go out there and perform our mission. We're going to land.

We got to stay focused. There's not a lot of time to think about the other stuff. My family supported me a lot. Just got to stay focused on the mission. We got a great crew on the ground supporting us. Shout out the ground folks. Favorite center. Give it a shout out.

I'm just one astronaut, but there are thousands of people working together to make this happen. Until you're an ex-astronaut or former astronaut or whatever, however they refer to it, then you're like, I'm retired. I don't give any shit anymore. I'm Story Musgrave. I'll tell you whatever you want to know. Exactly. Everything comes off the rails at that point. Yeah. No, I will say, though, that I felt like when the six were at NASA, the astronauts were a little cheekier with their answers at the time. At least Sally had to be, because if you're getting asked if you weep in the simulator when it breaks, I mean, how else are you going to respond if not laugh, you know, cringing while you're saying it.

So it was kind of neat to see how they handled the press. And I, I think even now the astronauts are a little more, you know, um, buttoned up the, so back then it was a little, it was a little,

the curtain was a little exposed. I was, so I mentioned, I was laughing a lot reading this book about these interactions with the press there was one uh i think it was sally rides interview to be an astronaut when they asked have you ever had amnesia and she said i don't know i can't remember i thought that was the funniest shit in the world and katie was like why why do you find that so funny i'm like imagine the scenario where you're in a very serious interview and you're like i can't remember it's so funny to me and then um i had oh my god learning about

that was so funny because it really i could see how it would play out like in a movie you know like the you know uh music going on like the kind of like dopey music as they're all undergoing montage cutting back and um you know i was steve holly is also a great um interview for the book and he he vividly remembers you know how what that process was like and he was describing to me how at one point one of the psychs the psychologist asked him if he wanted a Coke. And then it just like sent him into this tailspin because he was like, well, should I say that I want a Coke or should I not say that I want a Coke? What does it mean to say that I want a Coke? And I was just, you know, it's just, it's really lovely to, especially when it comes to astronauts to talk to them in that capacity. Cause you know, like, like we were saying, saying it's it's nice to see them more relaxed and to to uh you know observe their humanity because i feel like i would do the same thing i would be constantly questioning every move that i made while i was on the nasa campus

i forgot who it was that uh they asked my opinion of vietnam war and i told them and that was they were like freaking out about this. So many good bits. And I loved the part where they tricked them. They would ask about the Panama Canal one day, and then they knew that the astronaut candidates were talking to each other. So they would tell them, oh, they're going to ask about the Panama Canal. And then the next day they asked about the Suez Canal. And then the astronauts would say their rehearsed answer to the Panama Canal

and it's like that's not the same canal no man that's pretty good so good if you have not gotten the point yet this is a freaking good book it's so fun it's like space history that you've not read before

super refreshing Kevin in the chat is asking if this is ever going to be a movie which it absolutely should be so um you know i would story i would love i would love it um i think hollywood's got bigger fish to fry at the moment so right now just focused on the book and uh i think if you know one one piece of advice that I got before I started writing from my editor, which really guided me as I was doing it, was to not write the book like you would think a book would be written, but to write it like a screenplay. And so that's, you know, make it more of kind of a series of scenes. And so while it's sometimes you can't always do that,

you know i i tried to to kind of let that guide me whenever i did that's cool that's interesting i hadn't thought of writing books that way i haven't thought about writing books so it's good insight you know where are you gonna write another book you know where are you at in that phase because i feel like you probably went through i'm never gonna write a book again and then you're gonna get nostalgic about it and be like i should write another book i have heard that um i've heard you know we all kind of go through amnesia speaking of sally and her amnesia i'll probably go through the amnesia uh next year so maybe let's

book me for another off nominal and we'll see how I'm feeling. We do have a question in the chat from Kurt again. There's an audio version. Oh, yeah. Who's snoring that? Her name's Inez. I need to pull that up at the moment. I actually asked to do it, but they told me it was quite a lengthy

process. And so I didn't actually end up doing it, but her name is Inez Del Castillo and she's fantastic. So you should definitely, if you can't read it, listen to it. She's a great narrator. It's going to be sweet. I can't wait to hear her Sally Ride voice. It's going to be great. Side note, audio narrating voices is like a fascinating sub-topic that I can talk for hours about.

That shit will age poorly. That's one we'll look back on in 2040 and be like, what were we doing back then why are we getting this white guy to talk like that it's just gonna age poorly yeah i never really could think about those things of like what of our modern culture is gonna age really like not not like something overtly horrible that we know right now is horrible but those ones that the way that we read many of these johnny carson

bits of like oh that that was humor right yeah uh like what are those ones that the way that we read many of these Johnny Carson bits of like, oh, that that was like, what are those ones that are just going to be slightly grimacing, inducing? So maybe Johnny Carson. Yeah. Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. That was another one. He's he's part of the media conglomerate, in my opinion, and going through those archives. I mean, to be I'll give some credit to his audience. There were moments where they groaned. So that at least goes to show the jokes weren't good or weren't considered good. Or at least they knew they were bad, whether they liked it or not.

Yeah. I give them credit. All right, last thing before we're out of here. Jake's referenced STS-72. I would like to do some trivia without either of you looking anything up. Can anyone give me your... I'm going to do like... We're just going to do closest to here on what date STS-72 happened.

1999. Okay, Jake. He's doing a lot of math. Just take a guess. Yeah, it's got 90s also i'll go i'll say 97 jake wins it was january 11th 1996 can anyone name any of the crew on board i'll say this we'll try to hone it in a little bit one of them has been to the ISS recently. I don't know. I'm scared to say someone's name because I think it might be mean. I mean, they've been to the ISS at least on one shuttle flight.

Wait, Peggy or Mark? Okay, Jake, got any guesses? No. Koichi Wakata. Jeez. Yeah. Totally. I think he's one of the ones on the three spaceship crew, right?

He's flown on shuttle a ton of times, Soyuz and Crew Dragon. And Dragon. All right. Who else was on 72? Brian Duffy, Brent Jett, Leroy Chow, Winston Scott, Koichi Wakata, and Daniel Barry.

I don't know any of them. I know Leroy. It's the whole spaceship flight. I was going to say, we need more books. We need more books. Let's see. SDS 72.

It's a long article. I was going to say it was, it was, can you guess the orbiter used? You got a one in three. So discovery. Columbia. Endeavor.

It's great. This is a great podcast. Lauren, thanks for hanging out with us the six everyone needs to read it required reading for the off nominal crowd pre-order it uh what else should we tell them lauren anything else in particular uh just that i really enjoyed writing this book and you know i've been getting some feedback as people have been reading it and um it's been really special to hear people really connect with it. So it means a lot to me.

It is an off nominal certified book. It is so good. I'm so pumped for you. I can't wait to watch the rest of your junket. Please drink sufficient amounts of kombucha and everything will be all right. Enjoy your exciting time. Please drink sufficient amounts of kombucha and everything will be all right. Enjoy your exciting time. All right, everybody.

Thanks for hanging out and we'll see you soon. Bye, everyone. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. End of test.