Toward A New Frontier

A glorious start for the first U.S. spacewoman

Ride, Sally Ride Ride that big bird in the sky Ride, Sally Ride It's your turn to fly among the stars

—From a rock single by Casse Culver

Up and down the beachfront motel strip adjoining Florida's Kennedy Space Center last week, space buffs gathered in force. SORRY, NO VACANCY signs hung as far as 50 miles away. Some 1,600 correspondents packed the press grandstand. On the beaches around Cape Canaveral, half a million people watched. Not since the first flight of Columbia two years ago had so many enthusiasts assembled for a shuttle liftoff.

The object of this interest was not so much the flaming bird itself but rather one of Challenger's crew, Sally Kristen Ride. As Challenger headed off on the seventh shuttle mission, a bare 59 milliseconds late, the jubilation was as much for Ride as for the machine. By finally launching what Air Force Lieut. General James Abrahamson, chief of the shuttle program, called with old-fashioned chivalry "the first U.S. lady astronaut in space," NASA gave the shuttle program as much of a popular boost as it could have got from the most powerful new rocket.*

Ride, 32, a physicist by training from Encino, Calif., seemed almost born to the Brotherhood of the Right Stuff. She said little as the shuttle smoothly climbed skyward, except to take issue kiddingly with Bob Crippen, 45, Challenger's veteran commander, who was making his second shuttle flight. Said she: "He keeps saying there's nothing exciting happening. I'm not sure I'd go along with that."

For all the hoopla over Sally's ride, the flight also includes a number of other important firsts. Challenger is carrying five crew members, one more than any previous flight. One of them is a medical doctor, Norman Thagard, 39, the first member of that fraternity in the shuttle. His special task is to look into "space adaptation syndrome," the queasiness that afflicts so many astronauts during the first hours of weightlessness. True to her cool image, Ride showed no signs of discomfort.

On Friday morning, after six days in space and 95½ orbits of the earth, if the schedule holds and winds and weather are fair, Challenger will end its flight. Crippen and his copilot, Rick Hauck, 42, will glide the 100-ton craft to the first shuttle landing on the new three-mile-long runway at the Kennedy Space Center, with President Reagan looking on. Thus Challenger, which was prepared for flight in a record 63 days, will avoid the long and expensive cross-country piggyback haul that followed previous touchdowns on the Western deserts. The price for the convenience is far less room for error on landing.

By any measure, ST57 (for Space Transportation System), as the flight is called in NASA's abbreviation-prone parlance, is the most ambitious mission to date. Sally and her companions are so heavily "tasked" (more NASAese) that even the energetic Crippen initially had reservations about the workload for his crew. Still, as the mission got under way, the script seemed under perfect control.