The Women Who Would Have Been Sally Ride

Whenever the Soviets beat us to a milestone in space, it caused a moral-scientific panic in the United States. They got a satellite up there first in 1957, sparking "Sputnik Mania." Their space program was the first to put a man in space in 1961, sending the American effort to redouble its efforts. "We look back now [at Gagarin's flight] and say, 'Oh, that was just a small incident,' but in those days there were serious writings about the future of communism around the world, whether it was going to be a dominant factor," astronaut John Glenn recalled. "We took this very seriously -- the administration, President Kennedy and President Eisenhower after he came around to believe in the importance of it. At the time, we looked at this as representing our country in the Cold War."

So, one might have expected great movement when