Wednesday, April 16, 2025
1pm and 5:30pm
Join us to discuss the novel:
The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts
by Loren Grush
“Remarkable...Grush has an important story to tell, and she tells it
well. An inspiring story of the first American women to go into space,
charting their own course for the horizon.” —Kirkus Reviews
When NASA sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s the agency excluded women from the corps, arguing that only military test pilots—a group then made up exclusively of men—had the right stuff. It was an era in which women were steered away from jobs in science and deemed unqualified for space flight. Eventually, though, NASA recognized its blunder and opened the application process to a wider array of hopefuls, regardless of race or gender. From a candidate pool of 8,000 six elite women were selected in 1978—Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon.
In The Six, acclaimed journalist Loren Grush shows these brilliant and courageous women enduring claustrophobic—and sometimes deeply sexist—media attention, undergoing rigorous survival training, and preparing for years to take multi-million-dollar payloads into orbit. Together, the Six helped build the tools that made the space program run. One of the group, Judy Resnik, sacrificed her life when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded at 46,000 feet. Everyone knows of Sally Ride’s history-making first space ride, but each of the Six would make their mark.
Copies available to borrow at the library, or for purchase at a discount from Gibson's and MainStreet BookEnds.
Resources for the text:
- Author Loren Grush's website
- more about the book with extras from the publisher Simon&Schuster
- Nichelle Nichols' NASA recruitment video
- Audio interview with Grush on Verge.com
- Interview with Grush from Space.com
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- Grush experiencing extra gravity and zero-gravity
- Visit the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center (we have a pass to get you in -- call to reserve)
- Women in Space "Firsts" gallery at Space.com
- More on the Mercury 13:
- https://www.space.com/mercury-13.html
Discussion prompts:
1.