Astronaut Biography

When Richard Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004, his goal was simple: to offer paying customers a trip to space by the end of the decade. Seventeen years, countless delays, and one catastrophic crash later, his space tourism dream may finally be on the verge of becoming a reality. New Yorker journalist Nicholas Schmidle knows that story intimately. He spent nearly four years embedded with Virgin Galactic at its California hangar, meeting the individuals working to make commercial space travel possible.

Have you ever dreamed of going to outer space? When Sally Ride was a little girl, she watched on TV as astronaut John Glenn launched into space. Twenty years later, she became the first American woman to go to space. Ride had loved science since she was young. Some of her teachers thought she was wasting her time studying science, but she went on to earn her PhD in astrophysics anyway. When NASA's astronaut training program opened to women, Ride quickly applied. Some people thought women couldn't handle space flight. But Ride worked hard and proved them all wrong.

She was a wife, mother, teacher, and the first civilian to fly into space, but Christa’s dream tragically ended on a cold January day with the needless explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

Lisa Nowak, högt ansedd astronaut, sätter sig i sin bil, spänner upp ögonen och kör sträckan Houston till Orlando. Fjorton timmar senare, knappt utan mat eller toalettstopp, är hon framme, beredd att göra upp med kvinnan som i hennes ögon står i vägen för hennes och kollegan Bill Oefeleins eviga kärlek. En snabb titt ner i hennes bagage ger sken om illabådande intentioner: förutom kontanter kan man hitta en hammare, en fällkniv, latexhandskar och Colleen Shipmans, den romantiska rivalen, adress nedklottrat.