Mayday Plays - Heroes You Should Know: Sally Ride

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

Join Allegra and Sergio as they discuss American astronaut, Sally Ride.

Hi, friends! Welcome back to Heroes You Should Know! As you can see, I'm here with Sergio this week, I never know which direction you are for me. I'm below you, I'm below you. Hi! How's it going? This week is great. This week is great, yes. This week is great because it's Unintentionally Space Week, which I love that happened. We didn't really plan it out this way, but we're doing Star Forged session zero on Friday, which is awesome and very exciting. And as the name implies, it's in space. And now, today, we're going to talk about Sally Ride, who is an astronaut physicist.

I just got to tell you, Allegra, up front, I am a big fan of astronauts. I'm a big fan of NASA. I'm actually wearing my NASA t-shirt today. Oh, nice! So, I grew up as a kid in Florida, so I was near Cape Canaveral and where they set off all the rockets and stuff. And my grandmother, for a while, worked at NASA in the drafting department. She did drafts of the rockets and of the ships and stuff like that. So, she had schematics and she had photos and stuff. I had some hanging in my room, so I've always been a big fan of astronauts. I didn't know Sally Ride that much, so it's been a real pleasure kind of learning about her. I love her. She has always been like one of my, like, I have a really hard time listing like superlatives, like, who's your hero? Who's your favorite this? Who's your favorite that?

Right. And she's always been pretty high on my list of, like, okay, if I had to pick, like, personal heroes, Sally Ride's up there. She's so cool. Hell of a life. Hell of a life. Why don't we go ahead and jump into it? Actually, oh, I had one more thing I was going to say. I really did want to talk about Mae Jemisin, who I think is amazing, but she is still alive, which is great for us.

That's fantastic. The world gets to, like, have her more, which is awesome. But I feel really uncomfortable talking about a person who is alive, who could potentially, someone could be like, hey, these weirdos talked about you on a stream for Dungeons & Dragons. It's like, they turned you into a D&D. That seems weird to me. Like, she could hear about that through the Internet. And I would feel weird about that. Dr. Jemisin, you're fantastic if you do hear about this. You're an inspiration. She's super fucking cool. She was a doctor.

She was an astronaut. She was the first black woman in space. She was an activist. She was a dancer. Wow. She's the only person on Star Trek to have actually been to space. She totally deserves her own episode. Right?

She's cool as hell. But I hope I don't do that episode for a really, really, really, really, really long time because I would like her to live a long life and continue all the wonderful work she's been doing. So please go learn about me, Jemisin. She's cool as fuck. But we're going to talk about Sally Ride today, who is also cool as fuck. So let's start on that. Let's do it. Dive in. One day I'll get better at this, I swear. Just got to get one or two sips in.

Yeah. So Sally Ride was born May 26th, 1951 in Encino, California, just down the road from us. She had one sister named Karen and her parents were both elders at the Presbyterian Church. Her mother worked as a volunteer counselor at a women's correctional facility and her dad was a political science professor at the Santa Monica College. Like none, none, none science. None science there. They're all just like, Yeah.

Super chill. Yeah. More in the, what is it called? Not, not the mathematics. Social sciences. Yeah, social sciences, yeah. Yeah. Which is neat. So she, she went to, you know, public school for a while and then she went to a private school, Westlake School for Girls for High School on a partial tennis scholarship.

And she actually went on to be a nationally ranked tennis player for a few years into her undergraduate, I think it was, I think it was a junior year, I believe? Sophomore year, Sophomore year at Swarthmore College. And then Swarthmore, is that what it was called? Mm-hmm, gotcha. She kind of toyed with the idea of going professional, but then decided to concentrate her focus on her STEM career instead, which thank goodness for us she did. Yeah. I'm sure she would have been a great fucking professional tennis player too.

Honestly, she could do whatever she wanted. It's very cool to see how talented she was. Yeah, like multi, very multifaceted. Because you kind of, you always are just like, okay, like science nerds are just science nerds. Like in my head, it kind of goes like, okay, we've got wizards, wizards hang out over there. They don't do anything else. They're squishy and that's where they stay. But like, that's not real life. She's most definitely not a wizard, that's for sure.

No. It's like, when I did Alan Turing a couple of weeks ago and he was like a marathon runner for the hell of it. That's what it made me think of. It's like, okay, like they have physical prowess. This sounds shittier than I'm meaning it to sound. No, no, no. But I mean, you know, you expect people who are intelligent to not necessarily be that well rounded in terms of physicality and stuff. But that is what's interesting about astronauts is they have to be physically and mentally and intellectually like at the top of their game. Wow. Can you imagine being like shot off at this like mock whatever they shoot you off at and just having to like take it?

It just takes incredible training and it's the best of the best. Only the best can get up there. Brilliant, powerful, unbelievable. Astronauts are crazy. They're cool as hell. Anyway, so as I said, she would just swap more for three semesters, took physics courses at UCLA, and then she transferred to Stanford as a junior where she graduated with a double major, a BA in English and a bachelor's of science in physics in 1973. Which is also like we're going back to that kind of like you expect science people to be very like strictly science and like they don't really care about like the arts or like the other side of things. And then having her how like a double major and that was always like it was kind of a nice thing to read of like, okay, like she's incredibly well rounded. Yeah, really was.

So in 1975 she earns her master's from Stanford and then a PhD in 1978 while researching the interaction of x-rays with the interstellar medium. And her, her like area of expertise was astrophysics and free a lot free electron lasers. All very important smart things. I tried to read about them. I don't fully understand them. I've been doing this to myself a lot where I'm like, here's a cool person they're really smart I have to try and figure out what this means. They did something I don't understand. It sounds dope. So she does all of that amazing science finishes her PhD in 1978 and then she comes across a newspaper ad placed by NASA. And so she's one out of 35 applicants who are chosen from over 8000 to be a part of NASA's astronaut group eight, which is the first group to select women.

There were five other women. And NASA and NASA did kind of like vet the dudes who are in there. They were like, Hey, are you a misogynist? Hey, are you like mentally able to work with a woman who's just as smart as you? Right. And so they definitely kind of like weeded out the like shitty dudes. What year was this again? 1978.

1978, yeah. Which is like painfully recent. Yes, painfully recent. And she really had to deal a lot when it comes with, you know, people commenting on the fact that she was woman, which is just so hilarious. Yeah, she she talked about in an interview that a lot of the like higher up like older astronauts were kind of like taken aback by these six women kind of on their campus and they had to like get used to the idea. But in her words, they didn't give us a hard time. So I think it was more of a like, huh? What are you doing?

Right, right. They're just kind of startled more than anything. So she graduates training in 1979, which includes parachute jumping and water survival training, which makes a lot of sense because, you know, they're coming down through the atmosphere. If they've got like, I don't know, can you rip cord out of a rocket? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if they had parachutes in there or not. Yeah.

The water survival training made sense though, because they usually crashed out of the ocean. I was like, oh yeah, of course they, of course they learned that. So so graduating training means she's a little eligible to be a mission specialist. And while she's working on the ground, she is the capsule communicator for the second and third space shuttle flights and help to develop the Canadarm robotic arm that's on the space shuttle to like catch payload. So she's the one that helps develop it. And then later when she's actually on the shuttle, she's the one who operates it. Yeah. So at first she designed it and was, and was on earth, but would operate it or was she not operating it?

I don't, I don't think she was operating it at first. If I remember correctly, I think she developed it and like helped train the people who were going to operate it up there. If that's, that's, that was my understanding. I suppose that makes sense because I don't, I suppose you could technically control it, you know, via like a, you know, a wireless link or something because they can do it to the thing at Mars. Yeah, the rover on Mars, but maybe it wasn't sophisticated enough and you had to actually be there to control it. I don't know, I got the impression that she did, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe so. I need to, I should have gone back and figured that out actually.

It's all good. So she may or may not have operated it from earth, but she did from the space shuttle. So before her first flight, which they call her up for her first flight in 1983. But before then, the media loses their ever loving shit about a woman going to space. They're like asking her interview questions like, will the flight of affect your reproductive organs, which what, like I would be more concerned personally with a dude going because it's like external rather than internal. They're such goofy questions. There's another one. What's the other one that they asked?

Where is it? Do you weep when things go wrong on the job? So dumb. Just stupid. Yeah, it's like, how do you plan to cook for the other astronauts once you're up there? Just such dumb questions. I'm a fucking scientist dude. We all eat out of the same like foil packages.

Right. So she, so she deals with that. She, she kind of brushes them off. She always just kind of saw herself as an astronaut and later on she commented, it's too bad. This is such a big deal. It's too bad. Our society isn't further along. It had to have been exhausting in the, I mean, pretty much.

It still is exhausting to be a woman, but I think it must have been exhausting just in the, in the limelight. The first American woman in 1978 going to space. You're trying to do something that is changing the world and people are just asking the dumbest questions. Ladybug4673 in our chat says, women weren't allowed to ride trains initially because men thought their uteruses would fly out. Little load fact. Thank you. It's internal though, friends. It's up in there.

It's got a prolapse to come out. Okay. Don't please don't go into the detail of it. Look, I was just saying, it'd be a lot harder for a uterus to fly out than a dick to fly off. That's all I say. That's fair. That is fair. I agree.

So anyway, those are, those are some of their issues. And then some of the engineers called Sally in. I think they were trying to be sweet. I don't think it was meant as a dig. I think it was meant generally in a kind way. So they call her in to try and develop space-friendly makeup because they knew that the men were going to want shaving kits. They were like trying to accommodate what she might want. She does not appear like the kind of person that wears a lot of makeup.

I don't think she was. It's like, like the idea of it is very, I think it's steeped in like, we want to make sure you have things you need. Women need makeup, right? Right. I think they were trying to be like accommodating, but it was just stupid. Yeah. They probably thought, oh, you're, you're going to have photos or video taken of you. You probably are going to want to make up like every other woman.

It's like, Jesus Christ. No, I mean, if you look at all the pictures of her, like in space. No. No, of course not. Damn time for makeup in space. There's no reason for makeup in space. You make one mistake in space and you're dead. Like there's no time for it.

It's a fucking vacuum. Yes. Um, so that, that was one thing she had to deal with. And then they also, they tried to figure out how to deal with space menstruation and the engineers were very confused and suggested a hundred tampons for one woman in space for one week. Did they just constantly changing it? Right. Wow. So again, they were, they were, I think they were genuinely trying, but they had no idea what they were fucking doing.

It sounds like they were just like literally making up what they think might happen to a woman. Like, oh, if she goes into space and she has menstruation, it might be space menstruation and it's like super strong or something. So bizarre. Space blood will come out. Like, no dude, just chill. God, chill out. Um, so yeah, that's some of the stuff Sally had to deal with. We're laughing at it now, but I think it was really, like it had to have been just so much for her to deal with.

Sure. She had a lot of grace to deal with with it all. So much. Um, so in 1982, a year before she goes into space, she marries fellow NASA astronaut Steve Holly, but their marriage only lasts until I wrote 1997. It's supposed to be 1987. So just five years that they were married. Um, so while Sally, you think it would be tough to be married to an astronaut? I mean, I mean, they were both astronauts, right?

They were both. Yeah. Steve Holly was also an astronaut. So they probably felt like, you know, there was a, there was a kinship there, right? We can't, yeah. Right, right. But yeah, I mean, the fear of them never coming back. Yeah. God, like, just like, I can't imagine my girlfriend, like putting my girlfriend in a space show and being like, all right, babe, see you in two weeks. Yeah. Like, mm, there were obviously other reasons that her marriage didn't happen. Oh, of course.

It was later. Yes. Um, so while Sally is the first American woman in space, the first woman in space overall was Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. Yeah, there you go. 20, almost exactly 20 years earlier in 1963. There was another Russian cosmonaut who was the second woman in space overall and Sally is the third. So in June, on June 18th of 1983, she becomes the first American woman in space as a crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger for the STS-7 launch mission, which is intended to deploy two communication saddles. One for satellite, it's not saddles, communication saddles. We're just going to let saddles float around the orbit of Earth.

Is it? For the space horses. Get low, yeah! Anyway. That's where that nickname ride, Sally Ride comes from. Yes. Yes, not the song like this. But their communication satellites, one for Canada and one for Indonesia, as well as to test a TDSR satellite and release the first Shuttle Palette satellite, the SPAS-1.

The SPAS-1 was deployed and underwent experiments and was to be deployed, undergo experiments, and then recollected to be brought back to Earth. So it was like sent out to orbit and then to be caught. So one of Sally's jobs was to work the robotic arm that deployed and caught the SPAS-1, which is wild. Yeah, that's gotta be tough. You think the claw machine at Chuck E. Cheese is tough, you know what I mean? Yeah. Try doing it however many, what is it, hundreds of thousands of feet in the air without oxygen? No gravity.

No gravity in a space suit? Yeah. So yeah, so she's doing all that in space. And when they launched from Earth, people like spectators wore shirts with Ride Sally Ride written on them, which is the lyrics from a song, Mustang Sally by Wilson Pickett, which came out in 1966. So it's definitely not about her at all. But I kind of like that it was like, oh neat. This song has her name in it and she's going to ride a rocket. Yeah, no, the song's not about her, but I do like that the public kind of really rallied behind the excitement of the first American woman in space.

Yeah. For a while, she was, no, I'm sorry, not for a while. She was never the youngest astronaut in space. She was the youngest American astronaut in space when she traveled at age 32, I believe. Yes, 32. Interesting. And the youngest person overall was German Titov, another Russian cosmonaut age 25. Oh, those Russians just like shoving people into space, huh?

Cosmonauts were like, let's go, let's go, final frontier bitches. You said what, 25? 25. That's insanely young. Yeah. I mean, because if you think about it, like astronauts need to have a career first of like, sometimes they're pilots, sometimes they're scientists or physicists, doctors. So, you know, this is like the second phase of their life. So it's crazy to think somebody up there at 25, but 32 is still pretty young as well.

Yeah. Yeah. So she's 32. She goes into space. She comes back all as well. And then she takes her second flight on October 5th, 1984, the SCS 41G, which includes a group of seven, including another woman, Catherine Sullivan, who was the, which is the first time a woman does extra vehicular activities. Which is doing a space walk like she went outside the shuttle. Cool.

Very cool. Also, this included the first Canadian astronaut, the first Australian born astronaut, and the first astronaut with a beard. Okay. Cool. Important distinction. I don't know why, but apparently it is. Well, probably because just all those first astronauts were those clean cut pilots, you know, they just don't have any facial hair. It's like Captain America looking.

Interesting. Dudes. So what do they have left? Do they have the astronaut with a tattoo first astronaut with a piercing like? First astronaut that can like, that has to wear glasses. I don't know. So yeah, so they have all these first, some of them are like legit first. Some of them are like, is that a first?

Yeah. Some of them are reaching a little bit, but okay. Yeah. But by this point, she had spent more than 343 hours in space. Wow. And on that flight, she again used the robotic arm to adjust a radar antenna and remove ice from the outside of the shuttle. So she was like, perfecting her skills with that robotic arm. Have you ever seen that, that YouTube video of the astronaut who comes back from space and he's like talking to someone and he's trying to explain something.

And he's like holding, I think he's holding a cup. And he's like, okay, hold on. And he's like, he lets go of the cup and leaves like, like thinking it's going to just be left midair. Really? And he turns back and he reaches for the cup and the cup is not there. And he looks down. He's like, oh right. And he goes and gets it.

And then again, later in the interview, he's like, he's trying to demonstrate something with like a pen and he's holding the pen and he reaches again, reaches for something that's away and he lets go of the pen and the pen falls. I have not seen that. It's so interesting because like, if you got used to having that kind of like extra like, oh, I can just let this go and it'll still be there exactly where I left it when I come back. Like how, how much of like a relearning do you have to do when gravity is kind of involved? Let's see. It's like a guy behind like, like there's like a green background behind him. Yeah. I think I have it here.

I wonder if I can show it. Let's see if I can display capture here. There it is. Yeah. So let's see if I can, you probably, you probably won't be able to hear it. Yeah. I think it's okay. It's like just seeing the like, the look of shock on his face of like, it's not where I left it.

A part of me thinks this is a joke though. It could, honestly, it could be, which is kind of. I get the impression that was like an April Fools that NASA did. Oh, that'd be good. Yeah, there you go. Bless him. Yeah. And then just like coming back and be like, oh, but like, I wonder if that's genuinely something you have to pretend to.

Well, I mean, we know for sure, like gravity really eats up their, their bone density and their muscle mass. So it takes a lot to recoup once you come back. Space man. Exactly. Anyway, so Sally is training for her third mission, the SCS 61N when the space shuttle, space shuttle challenger explodes in January of 1986. So unsurprisingly, like grounds her, her mission because she was supposed to fly in. So in the wake of that explosion, Sally is added to the Rogers Commission, which is the folks that are put together to investigate the Challenger disaster and had, and she heads up a subcommittee on the operations of what was, you know, what was going on on the, on the shuttle. And she's actually the only person to have served on both the commission for the Challenger explosion and then again in 2013 when the Columbia explosion happened as well.

Oh, yeah, I was, I was very young. So I didn't really register, but it was something that was kind of always in the news for the next couple of years. I was the challenger was the challenger was I was like two, two and a half. Oh, I'm sorry. So what year was Columbia 2003. Yeah, no, of course, I remember that one. Yeah. Okay, yeah, because I remember that because I was like eight or nine and I remember like being in my uncle's house and seeing it on the news and being like, what the fuck.

Yeah, it's always distressing what happens. I mean, you know, it's amazing that NASA hasn't had more accidents. It goes to show you how, how good they are, how, how good their engineers are that they, you know, of all of the accidents. It's only been like two major ones, at least in modern history. Yeah. Yeah. So she serves, she serves on both of those commissions. So after her death, General Donalds.

Coutinia. Coutinia. So he reveals that she is the one who discreetly kind of provided him with the information that the O rings. That became stiff in the low temperature, which kind of were eventually what caused the failure of the spatial. She was the one who kind of brought that information him and was like, Hey, this is what this was. So that's cool. After that investigation, Sally is assigned to the NASA headquarters in DC, where she leads the first strategic planning effort and creates a report called the NASA, NASA leadership and Americans, America's future in space. So she's always been like, thinking about, okay, what's next?

We've gone to space, we've gone to the moon. What's next? We've got an international space station. What's next? And she was always very like into the forward motion of what are we doing after this? Where are we going after this? Right. 1987 she leaves that position in DC and she works for the Stanford University Center of international security and arms control.

Again, doing space stuff. You know, it sounds like she's finally kind of achieved. Not an administrative, but like a, you know, people come to her for, you know, like, Hey, you know, what do you think about this? How do we go about building, you know, these programs and stuff like that? So she's definitely moved up. Yeah, exactly. She's moved up within NASA for sure.

Yeah, that's, that's definitely like, she's definitely climbing that ladder of like a very important person at NASA to know. 1989, she becomes a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. And at the same time, she is the director of the California Space Institute. She's a member of the president's commission or sorry, president's committee of advisors on science and technology and the advisory board for the National Women's History Museum. She's doing a bunch. Yeah, she's involved in everything spacey, which is fantastic. And then from the mid 90s until her death, she's also leading two public outreach programs at NASA. The ISS Earth Cam and the Grail Moon Cam projects, which are based in the NASA Jet Propulsion Labs, which is, which is also pretty close to us, right?

It's like, Jet Propulsion, I believe has a situation in Hawthorne, which is right by El Segundo. So they're just south of us. Just south of us. That's right. Yeah. And they have those and the UCSD as well, which basically allowed kids in middle school to take pictures of Earth and the moon using a camera that's on the International Space Station. That's cool.

They could like request specific things. I don't, I don't think they got to be like, I'm going to push the button that takes this picture. But I think they got to like request things and they could, they could take pictures of them and then they would send them to them to study. I wonder if any of the kids requested like, Hey, take a photo of my crush's window. It's the ultimate romantic move in the 1990s. I'm going to get the International Space Station. I mean, before Google Earth, you know. For Google Earth.

Ah, what are those times? We get to 1999, where she acts in the season five finale of a show called Touched by an Angel. Oh, cool. I watched more of that show than I would like to say. Do you remember Sally? Oh, no, I didn't. Oh, you didn't watch it as a kid. You're saying yes.

I went back just now. For research purposes. I did remember, like I heard the theme song and I was like, Oh, this was like, I remember this from my childhood weirdly. But I watched it for research purposes. She was herself. She was talking to another astronaut. It was painfully 90s. She did a great job though.

She was her. It was awesome. I have a photo of her on Sesame Street as well. So at some point, she must have done Sesame Street. Yeah. That's nice. Sesame Street's got a lot of good stuff. Yeah, man.

They always have the best people on there. Sorry, I got a nostalgia about Sesame Street. Anyway, let's just go watch Sesame Street after this. Okay. Anyway, so 2001, we're 2001 and she co-found Sally Ride Science, which creates like entertaining science, math, technology programs and publications for like upper middle school or sorry, upper elementary and middle school kids kind of geared toward more young women. And it's not only for the students themselves, but it's actually got like resources for the teachers and the parents to kind of like continue helping to foster that like interest in science and interest in math and like all the STEM stuff. So she kind of became like Neil deGrasse Tyson, like a science advocate, you know, kind of a thing.

Right, exactly. She wants to like, she wants to move it forward and like make sure people are, you know, kids are continuing to like have that love. For sure. Supported, that's the word. She also wrote and or co-wrote seven books on space for children. Also geared towards supporting their love of science and space and all that good stuff. There's a couple of them I want to find for my sister because I think she would like them. And then in 2009, she was part of the Augustine committee, which helped define NASA's space like goals for the future, which I think is really neat.

She was like, okay, I'm going to keep saying what's next. And that's great. And she does a whole lot of cool stuff. But unfortunately, Sally ride passed away on July 23, 2012 of pancreatic cancer. And in her bitch, her obituary, it's revealed that her partner of 27 years was Tam O'Shaughnessy. And we're going to get the whole like the whole trope of like childhood friends to lovers. It's coming. Because Tam was a childhood friend who she met when they were both aspiring tennis players.

They kept in contact over the years. A relationship blossomed. She was also a scientist and she helped co-found Sally ride science where she served. I think she still serves as CEO and a chair of the board. Wasn't Tam also a pretty successful tennis player? She was a pretty successful tennis player and scientist. Brilliant, of course. She co-wrote six of the seven books with Sally.

Their relationship was very private, but never secret. So like it was like, you know, private, but like they weren't hiding it or anything. In an interview, her sister said that like, we all knew about Tam. She was part of the family. Like it was, it was no big deal. And it was, it was a similar thing with her cancer diagnosis. Like that one, she kept a little bit more secret and private. Just because she was like, it's, it's, it's my thing.

Like you don't need to know about it. It's my private business. You know, she passed away and that's when it all kind of comes out. But by this confirmation from Sally's sister, Karen, who's also, who goes by bear. I wouldn't go by Karen either. I bear like, if you could go by bear, fucking go by bear, dude. Bear grills. What's up?

Yeah. So this makes Sally the first lesbian astronaut and the first lesbian in space, which is cool. There we go. So take that cosmonauts. I mean, there's, there's every possible. There's every possibility that one of the cosmonauts was also a lesbian and just not like acknowledged. Who knows? Yeah.

Um, but over her life, Sally received countless awards and accolades. Um, she's in the National Women's Hall of Fame, the National Astronauts Hall of Fame, the California Hall of Fame. She was awarded NASA spaceflight medal twice. There are two elementary schools named after her, one in Texas, one in Maine, neither of which are states she lived in. Um, a Navy ship was christened in 2014, the RV Sally ride and is used for oceanographic research. That's cool. Which I feel like is really interesting because it's the opposite direction she went, but she was also very much like Earth science focused. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's cool. Um, in 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the National Tribute to Sally Ride at the Kennedy Center. And the Tam was the, sorry, the medal was presented to Tam at the ceremony. Um, in 2014, she was added to the Legacy Walk in Chicago, which is an outdoor display that celebrates LGBTQIA plus history and people, which is lovely. Um, she was printed on a stamp in 2018. That's how you know you made it. Right.

But also like one of her childhood hobbies was stamp collecting. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. I have a photo of what appears to be a Lego mini figure of her. So there was a, there's also a Barbie of her. Um, I saw it at, I saw it at Target like a couple of years ago and I almost bought it and I was like, I'm a 26 year old person. I don't need a Barbie doll. Even if it is Sally Ride, I wish I'd got it.

Um, she's going to be on a quarter in 2022. Very cool. Um, there is a Janelle Monae song called Sally Ride, which I have cried listening to more times than I haven't because it's a good fucking song. Um, so Dr. Ride always said that she felt really fortunate that her parents were supportive of her interests in science, even though neither of them really came from physical science backgrounds. And their support is what encouraged her to explore further, which is great. Her sister, Bear, is a gay Presbyterian minister. I was reading, I was reading about it and I was like, all right, her sister's name, her sister's name is Bear. And I was like, both of these sisters aren't lesbians.

I'm going to be sad because like, if your name's Bear and you're not a lesbian. Yeah. Man, like that's great for you. But also I kind of had expectation. Right. It makes sense now. It makes sense how you say that. But then it was like, and she was, and I was like, great.

Okay. Um, so after her death and an interview, she talks about how private a person Sally was, as I said before, and how even in old interviews, you can see like, interviewers getting annoyed with her because she doesn't really react to questions about being the first American woman in space. Because like, according to her sister, she's like, those are personal feelings. They're private. You don't know about this. And you can see people getting like frustrated that she wasn't like, oh my goodness. I'm so excited to be the first woman in space from America. Like, I just think it's kind of funny, but like, you know, she, she, yeah, she seemed like a kind but stoic person, you know, somebody who kept their, their emotions close to the chest.

Again, being a being a astronaut, you know, you, you have to have a lot of mental control, you know, emotional control. For sure. But do you weep when things go wrong at work? In 2009, there was an astronomy night at the White House where Sally right took questions from the internet via Facebook. And I watched it and it was really lovely. I think there's a picture of it. You've got. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's so lovely and like just listening to her talk about science and how like she's really passionate about like making sure that like women and young girls are like very strong and they're passionate about it. And like if they want to continue on it, she wants them to have like that support and how like, I don't know. I just, I loved hearing her talk about science as a whole, but especially like her love of like helping other people find science. And so in 2017, which is five years after she passed away, 50% of the new class of astronauts were women, which is I think what she would have wanted. Absolutely. Yeah, that's exciting. And I'm like, we're going to end on like a personal note because Sally right, as I said is one of my personal heroes. But I remember I just turned 18 and I was in LA for the first time with people like mostly people I didn't really want to be here with like save one person.

But I was like sitting at a hot car on the top of a parking structure and I was reading her obituary in a car. And then I got to the part where it said partner of 27 years. And it kind of like rocked my world a little bit because I was like, one of my heroes was gay, cool. And I like this is before I figured out any of this about me. I was a completely different person and like figuring that out and like reading, reading that one of my heroes was gay and like had been in love with this other woman for like 27 years was like a huge. Not like it wasn't like a huge thing, but it like it definitely was a like a bit of like a turning point. Sure. Clearly, clearly it kind of, you know, affected you and made you think.

Yeah. Yeah. So thanks Sally. I appreciate you. Yeah, God bless her. She had a hell of a life and did a lot of good. Little badass. All right.

Done with that personal Ubi Googie stuff. Let's talk about our bill. Yeah. What do we do buddy? What is it going to be like when she fights a dragon? Space dragon. Space dragon. Yeah.

Do you want me to start first? All right. Let me, let me show what I got here. This is my bill for Sally ride. So, you know, I've been on here before and I always like to approach it like what, what does she do in her life in that order and like how could I build in that way? So first of all, as a background, I made her a sage. Yeah. Obviously studying all the time, make sense of physics, you know, master in physics or PhD in physics.

Her first level, her first three levels are going to be artificial. The reason being is she is so technology focused in her first, you know, stint at NASA. She was instrumental in the creation of the rover, not the rover, excuse me, the arm, the, the Canada arm. So I made her a battle Smith artificer. There's obviously magical tinkering. You can infuse an item, make it make it a magic item, etc. Artificial, excuse me, artificial specialist is battle Smith, which means that she is battle ready. I think that means she is proficient with Marshall and heavy armor.

And she has steel defender, which is she has like a robot by her side. So I thought that would be perfect just to have the arm around, you know, fighting with her. I thought that made sense. So that's the first three levels. And then I did four levels in cleric. Cleric just makes sense. And I went with Twilight domain, Twilight domain, I think it's in Tasha's or in some other. I looked at that one too, actually.

Yeah. And although Twilight isn't technically, Twilight doesn't reference space. It means more like the difference between night and day. I still thought the mechanics worked really well. So eyes of the night, let me pull up what this thing has. So the, the, the first thing that you get at level one is eyes of the night. You can see through the deepest gloom, your dark vision has a range of about 300 feet. And I thought that was cool for just like you're in space and you know, you probably acclimate to the vacuum and to the darkness and to the extreme brightness and dim light.

And as an action, you can magically share this dark vision with somebody, which I thought was cool. Oh, I didn't notice that part. That's so cool. Yes. Vigilant blessing is something that as an action, you touch either yourself or someone else and they have advantage on the next initiative role that they make. That was interesting. And then Twilight sanctuary as an action, you present your holy symbol in a sphere of Twilight emanates from you. Last for a minute. It grants you temporary hit points and you end one effect on it causing it to be charmed or frightened. So yeah, so for you or Ally, I think our charmed or frightened gets rid of that.

So I thought that was cool. And I thought that was, you know, she's always working with other astronauts. So it makes sense that, you know, you need these team abilities and clerics are great for teams. And then finally was the three levels in Horizon Walker, the Ranger class. I looked at that one too. Yeah. I mean, obviously Horizon Walker is just perfect, you know, for an astronaut. That's what they do. What would the favorite enemy of a Horizon Walker be? I chose aberrations. They tend to be kind of spacey, weird creatures. Yeah. Favorite terrain. I just said space.

The fighting style. There is an unearthed arcana called Mariner. And the Mariner fighting style gives you a climbing speed and a swimming speed. And I thought that made sense with all of her training in water and stuff like that. Mariner space. Yes, exactly. So it would be like reflavered for space. But then that can be so cool. At third level for the Horizon Walker, there's detect portal. You can detect within a mile, a portal. I mean, I flavor that as like, you know, maybe she could detect space anomalies or...

When like the shuttle was coming back around. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Or like full magic, so you can just detect portals. Exactly. And then planar warrior, which is just a cool ability to add force damage to your attacks when you target a creature. So that's that. How'd she end up stat wise? Stat wise, since I started with Artificer, it was constitution and intelligence that were kind of the main two ones. And just so that I could multi-class properly, I had to bump up dex and wisdom.

So strength is at a nine, dex is at a 13, con and intelligence are at 16. Wisdom is at a 14 and charisma is at a nine. Nice. So, you know, because of this whole mix of multi-classing, she's good at Arkana or proficient in Arkana, athletics, history, investigation, nature, perception, sleight of hand and survival. So a lot of those sleight of hand kind of makes sense for working with the with the Canada arm. Yeah. And I managed to get her hit points just kind of doing the the average up to 86, which is not too bad. Oh, nice.

Yeah, I didn't bother with armor class or anything like that. She is proficient with light armor, medium armor, martial weapons, heavy armor and shields, simple weapons, thieves tools, tinker's tools, which makes sense. Yeah. And then for spells, you know, I was able to pull from like all three of those classes, guidance, mending and sacred flame makes sense. Shield, fairy fire, sleep, detect evil and good, protection from evil and good, heroism and alarm. I just thought of, you know, alarm goes off. It sounds like the the shuttles alarm going off. At second level, there's lesser restoration, enhance ability and find traps.

I chose lesser and fine traps for the idea of when, you know, when the shuttle exploded and when she was doing the, you know, the study into it. She might, you know, she could maybe use these spells. At third level, moonbeam, because it's moonbeam. Moonbeam is a good ass spell. It's a great spell, very powerful. No one can tell me otherwise. I love moonbeam. See invisibility, protection from evil and good, which was something I get as a ranger.

And then at fourth level, she just had two extra spells, which was freedom of movement and locate creature. I just think freedom of movement is good for an astronaut to have in space, floating around. Yeah, that's that's Sally Ride for me. Just a three part multiclass. That's so good. I love, I love a good three part multiclass. Yeah, and I'm actually proud of myself because last time I did this, I had really low hit points. And now I have a pretty decent amount for a 10th level character.

Yeah, for sure. Oh, man. Oh, I'm so excited. I love that. Are you ready to do yours? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay.

I also did sage for a background. Okay. But I did druid six and cleric four. Oh, cool. So for druid, I did circle of stars. Of course. Druids are my favorite class. Circle of stars might be my favorite subclass.

I think it fits really well. It's super cool. You have all your usual druid stuff like wild shape and drew like knowing druidic and spell casting and all that. What would Sally Ride turn into? Like what is an animal to you? Or would she, would she use that ability a lot in this build? I, okay. Actually, we'll get to her story forms.

Okay. Which are, which are basically she can do wild shape, but become like a starry form rather than transforming. Okay. So she just do that. Yeah. So while you're a starry form, you retain your game statistics, but your body becomes a luminous. Your joints glimmer with stars and glowing lights. It sounds really pretty.

You kind of like radiate light for an additional 10 feet. The form lasts for 10 minutes. You know, the usual, the usual wild shape stuff. Whenever you assume your starry form, you can choose from the following constellations that glimmer on your body. So there's the archer when you activate it as a bonus action on subsequent turns. While at last you can make a range spell attack by hurling luminous arrows at a target within 60 feet of you on a hit. It deals radiant damage. You can be, you can have the chalice, which is when you cast a spell slot, you cast a spell using a spell slot that restores hit points to a creature.

You or another creature within 30 feet regain hit points equal to a d8 plus your wisdom modifier. So you can heal or there's also dragon when you make an intelligence or wisdom check or a constitution saving throw to maintain concentration on a spell. You can treat a roll of nine or lower on a d20 as a 10. So like very useful, very cool. And then at six level, you also get cosmic omen, which is kind of consult your, oh, sorry, I'll go back to star map. Sorry, I got distracted by starry forms. But the first thing you get at second level is starry map, which is a chart of the heavens. And when you're holding this map, you know the guidance cantrip, and it doesn't take away from your, you know, yeah, you have guiding bolt as a spell prepared.

It counts as a jurid spell for you and it doesn't count against the number of spells you have prepared. And you can cast guiding bolt without expending a spell slot. And you can do this a number of times equal to proficiency bonus and regain all expended use after you finish the long rest, which is so cool. Yeah, that's a really cool build, which is four times at 10th level. You can you can just do guiding bolt four times at 10th level costing you nothing cost enough. It's so cool. Very cool. So when you reach 6th level, you get cosmic omen, which is you consult your map and you can roll a die.

And until you finish the next long rest, you gain access to a special reaction based on what you've rolled. So wheel is even when a creature you can see within 30 feet of you is about to make an attack roll, a saving throw or an ability check. You can use your reaction to add a d6 to their role. Nice. Or woe, which is odds whenever a creature you can see within 30 feet of you is about to make an attack, saving throw or ability check. You can use a d6 to subtract from that number. And you can use this reaction a number of times equal to proficiency bonus and regain all expended versions of, you know. So again, for use that very cool.

And also druids are great and I love them. And then for cleric 4, I went with the knowledge domain of cleric. Yeah, I almost went with knowledge domain too. Yep. I was so close to doing horizon walker instead of cleric. But just her love of knowledge and her love of cleric, it made the most sense to me. So at first level, you get the spells command and identify. Don't count against the ones you know.

And then at third level, you get augury and suggestion, which are great. At first level, you get blessing of knowledge, which is you learn two languages of your choice, which would put her up to five languages by my account on my belt of her. You also become proficient with your choice of Arcana history, nature or religion and proficiency bonuses are doubled with those checks. Wow. Yeah, I see now your history and nature are pretty high. Yeah, my history and nature are 11. The rest that I had for her were Arcana, which is everything else is at a seven Arcana perception, religion and survival. Because I kind of wanted to call back to like her history with her family and like her sister being president minister.

So a little bit of religions. Oh, that makes sense. Okay. I think she's a cleric. And then a channel divinity at second level. You can divine from a well of knowledge as an action. You can choose one skill or one tool and for 10 minutes, you have proficiency with that chosen skill or tool. Interesting.

So besides the besides the usual channel divinities that she'd have at that point, which I think is just turned on dead right now. So those are pretty cool things that she would have and as a cleric, she would have like proficiency in. What was it? Medium armor and web, I think any weapons correctly, but I gave her a light hammer. But for like flavor purposes, it's a robotic arm. And she just beats people. And I kind of, I kind of glossed over the fact that Druids aren't allowed to use things that are made of metal. One, because I think that's stupid metal comes from the earth.

That's true. But two, it doesn't make sense for her. And that's a dumb rule. She has leather armor, but I'm flavoring it as her space suit. And then for spale. What would be the druidic focus? Like, what do you imagine it to be? That's what I've kind of been like going back and forth on because I kind of like the idea of her, like her hammer being like the robotic arm also being her druidic focus.

Yeah. But I don't like, I don't know, maybe like a tennis racket. Sure, yeah. Or like her stamp collection. I don't know. The, the artificer, I think can make like their, their, their focus like almost anything that they create or have. I think it's an ability like you can make your weapon or you can make your armor or your, your focus. So I, yeah, I imagine like her space suit was her focus.

Yeah. I feel like, I feel like she'd just have like a, like a small thing or like, oh no. Or maybe like a small trinket from Tam that she carried to space. Yeah, that's cute. Anyway, I'm just writing fan fiction. I sat her down. I took just two ASIs instead of taking any feats. I thought about giving her athlete, but by the time I was looking at it, I was like, ASIs will do basically the same thing.

Her strength to the 12, dexterity and constitution are both 14. Intelligence wisdom are both 16. And then her charisma is a 10. Just because I don't think she was that bothered by it, which valid. True. Yeah, that's true. I really didn't take into consideration how wise she probably was to be in the sense that she was able to handle the scrutiny quite well. Right.

Yeah. Um, so she has a ton of spells and a ton of cantrips. She gets guidance because of, um, was it circle of stars? Yeah. Uh, light, mending, thaumaturgy, sacred frame, juridcraft, produce flame. Uh, just cause I thought like it'd be kind of cool if you could like solder with a produce flame. Oh, that's cool. Like maybe not solder in space because that's dangerous, but like soldering on earth.

She liked that. And then thorn whip because I thought that would be super useful in space. If someone becomes untethered, you can just. Yeah, that's great. Um, first level command, identify and then which she gets from knowledge domain, guiding bolt, which she gets from circle of stars. Uh, and then I gave her bless, shield of faith, cure wounds because druid, cleric, you have to have at least cure wounds in there. For sure. Uh, and then thunder wave because thunder raves also a good spell and you can't tell me otherwise.

Um, suggestion and augury from, uh, knowledge domain as well. And then silence, which I think would be utterly terrifying if you had an astronaut who could just project to you the silence of space. Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. For sure. Uh, also moonbeam as well because moonbeam is fucking good. Uh, and then for third levels, I gave her, uh, daylight, which I thought would be useful for like illuminating magical darkness as well as just like in space. Just a good flavor.

Yeah. Yeah. Good, good flavor there. Uh, wind walk because that kind of reminded me of like anti-gravity, how they just kind of different directions. Call lightning cause it's cause I, cause I honestly, I picked call lightning cause I was like, she doesn't have a whole lot of offensive stuff. She can't really protect herself that much. That's the problem is like when you're making these builds, like you really think about what spells like work with this person and it tends to lean more towards kind of the flavorful spells and not so much combat centric spells. Yeah.

I try to like find a happy medium or at least they're like a couple combat spells and they're just like, okay, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. Right. Um, and then sending because it'd be really nice to be able to just like send messages back down to earth. Um, and revivify cleric. She has to. Um, I also gave her freedom of movement. Um, polymorph for the same reason I'd call lightning.

It's good utility. Yeah. Um, and then banishment because getting banished in space sounds like the worst thing I can imagine. Getting banished to space. Yeah. That's a good one. I was looking at banishment too, and I couldn't quite figure out how it would work in my head, but I like your explanation of it. Yeah.

Uh, and then fifth level, I gave her greater restoration. Um, and also conjure elemental because I like that conjure, conjure elemental always feels like vaguely space e to me. Sure. Yeah. I don't really have a good reason why not, but it, it feels like. You can, you can flavor a fire elemental is like a star elemental or something. You know. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Elemental is like gas. Yeah. Or a rock elemental is like a, as a, as a meteor or something. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

I feel better about this. Makes more sense. And then, oh, her, her hit points were pretty low for me. I got a 58. Um, but she was, she was human. So. Yeah. We've got, we've got, we've got, uh, we've got things to make her a tank.

That was good. It's a good build. I mean, I think you've managed to do a lot with her spells. Like I focused more on the classes kind of defining her. And it looks like you. Feed that cat. Oh, medicate the cat. But I feel like you did a great job picking the spells that really like flavor wise.

I think support who she is. And we both definitely like, we took it two different directions, but it worked. Fucking well. Yeah. Good job. And you too, buddy. That was fun. It was fun learning about her.

You know, cause I, like I said at the beginning, I've always been interested in astronauts and stuff. And it was just very cool to, to learn about another one. Super cool. Super cool. Super cool person. Um, thank you Sergio for hanging out with me. Yeah.

Thank you. Um, and run in, run in our, run in our twitchums. Uh, is there anything you need to, you want to, sorry. Twitch, it just made me think of stacums. You know what stacums are? No. Stacums are like frozen strips of meat that like you can like microwave and eat. It's like cheap meat that like latchkey kids use to, to feed themselves.

These are jerky. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. So I just thought of that. Stacums is my, trying to make it cute for latchkey kids. Oh God. Um, yeah.

Wow. You asked me a question. Yeah. Things we, things we can promote and talk about. Well, we have this Friday, we've got a new episode of Ashoka. We've got what? Maybe two? No, we don't.

We don't, we don't this weekend. Oh, that's right. Excuse me. Starforge. We have our Starforge says zero this week though. Yeah. Friday is Starforge. We'll have everybody on.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then, um, Tuesday we should start up again with our normal, uh, Starforge. It might be a rerun of, of Friday, but it might also be just kind of depending on schedules, uh, you know, an actual session. So we'll see about that. But yeah, then we'll, we'll just continue along our way. We've got, what would you say?

Two episodes left of Ashoka? Potentially just one. Potentially just one long one, right? It could be, it could be some like big, sexy, juicy, long ass episode, or we might break it down into two just for Eli Sanity. Right. It could be great either way. There's a lot of, I, I, I can, I can reveal that I cried.

I'll say that at least once. I think maybe twice. It's good. It's a good ending. Critical Role did seven hours. So I think, you know, we can, we can do a couple hours. Yeah. Um, yeah.

So we'll have, we'll have Ashoka coming at you. Um, not this week. Um, probably next week. Yeah. Again, if Eli needs more time, we give Eli more time. Absolutely. Because Eli is a goddess and we do what Eli needs. Um, we, yes, as Sergio said, we'll be back with our, with our Starforge Iron Sworn.

But definitely join us on Friday if you can. Please do. Oh, it's going to be, you know the chaos when all seven of us get together. Yeah. I suspect it's going to be a, a, a universe no one has ever expected. Oh God. That's where, session one for Iron Sworn was where we came up with the storm birds. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting because we're going to come into that with a little less structure. I have a little bit less of an idea about what to do. So it's, we're going to just completely make it up and see, see where it goes. Yeah. Well, I'm so excited.

I can't wait. I love doing sessions with you guys because they are just fucking nonsense. They are full of creativity. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Um, I also want to say, I also want to say if anyone is, is enjoying our stuff. I mean, you do such a great job of hosting this show and you know, we're always trying to grow.

We do have a Patreon that you can subscribe to. If you just want to subscribe to our Twitch, that's a lovely way to support us. But, um, we, we were really enjoying this. It's, it's a lot of fun. Yeah. Uh, also if you don't already follow us on social media, made a role play on Twitter and made a RP on Instagram. Um, oh, is there anything else?

I feel like I'm forgetting things. No, I think we've got over everything. Yeah. We, I think, I think it's just cause we're doing a lot of stuff like. Yes. We have a lot of the pipeline that we're thinking about behind the scenes. Exactly. Yeah.

I think that's what I'm thinking about. We've got a lot on our plates. So one day we get to know. Not yet though. Um, but thank you everyone for hanging out with us, for going to space with us. Go to space with us again in two days on Friday. Well, it'll be seven o'clock, 7pm PST as usual. Um, yeah.

Thank you Sergio. Thank you all of our friends who watched. Uh, and I hope you have a lovely rest of your week. You too Allegra. Thanks guys. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.