Monday, July 23, 2012

Dang

Sally Ride, the first woman who went into outer space, has died. Like anyone my age, I remember that being a big deal at the time. The only other woman anyone's heard of since was of course Christa McAulife; a few years ago HERE I stumbled on a doc about her backup, Barbara Morgan.
Out of 11,000 applicants, Barbara Morgan was named the runner-up to New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe and trained alongside her. But after McAuliffe's death on the shuttle Challenger in January, 1986, NASA cancelled the Teacher-in-Space program. 
"It looked to me personally that Barbara Morgan would never get a chance to fly," said Bill Harwood, a veteran CBS space reporter.
But history would dictate another course. Using rare footage, photos and internal documents, as well as interviews with Morgan, her friends, colleagues, students and family, No Limits shows how Barbara became a full-fledged astronaut, and then overcame additional challenges, including the loss the crew of the shuttle Columbia on February 1, 2003. Morgan had been scheduled to be on Columbia's next flight later that year.

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