New documentary reveals the triumphs and heartbreak of Sally Ride's legacy

San Francisco Chronicle​

14-06-2025

The inspiring story of Sally Ride, the first American woman in outer space, is given its full, deserved due in a new National Geographic documentary.
And it broke my heart.
Not because of how 'Sally' depicts the incredibly capable, Stanford-educated physicist's efforts to break the highest of glass ceilings and be recognized for her abilities rather than her sex. Utilizing plentiful archival footage, contemporary commentary, recent interview observations from people who were there and some dramatized recreation, director Cristina Costantini gets some sly laughs, edged with appropriate anger, out of the sexist mindsets Ride deftly steered her career through in the 1970s and '80s.
What makes 'Sally' so sad was the astronaut's decision to keep her sexuality secret — as her public image soared to heights few women had ever known — until her death from pancreatic cancer in 2012. This aspect of her life grows especially poignant in the film due to the participation of Tam O'Shaughnessy. A tennis buddy Ride met when they were tweens (both Southern California girls were mentored by Billie Jean King), O'Shaughnessy later became her life partner of 27 years.
An erudite biology professor, O'Shaughnessy provides much of the film's insight into Ride's personal life during extensive interview stretches and, presumably, via additional input behind the scenes (she has an executive producer credit). Subjective as some of this may be, it's powerful emotional stuff that often reveals more about O'Shaughnessy's own feelings than about Ride herself, who remained enigmatic — even to the love of her life. Fellow astronaut Steven Hawley, who was married to Ride for five years, still seems baffled by what was really going on with her.
But like her subject, Costantini maintains a certain rigor in the sentiment department. She doesn't come close to suggesting that Ride was riddled with personal anxieties or fears of being outed. On the other hand, the NASA legend is neither presented as emotionless, calculating nor furtive, but rather as a focused professional who could separate the joy in her achievements from the cacophony of everything else.
One brief clip of her mother Carol reinforces the telling intel that Ride was not raised in a demonstrative home.
'If I knew how I felt about feelings, I would probably not tell you,' an immovable Carol says to the camera.
Yet Ride's determination, boldness and courage come across palpable. This is brought home when, following her own groundbreaking missions, Ride became the only Space Shuttle astronaut on the committee investigating the Challenger disaster. As the movie frames it, she essentially sacrificed her own future at NASA to expose the cause of the post-launch explosion, and the systemic incompetence that led to it.
Costantini ('Science Fair,' 'Mucho Mucho Amor') said she has been a Sally Ride fan since third grade, when she painted a mural of her hero on a school wall. With 'Sally,' she presents a portrait of a pure scientist cognizant of the example she was setting for girls and women of all generations to come. The film is indelibly triumphant in that way; its sadness is generated partly by Ride's apparent inability to fully master the science of love, and certainly by the restrictions a homophobic culture placed on her at the time.
There's a clip near the end of Barack Obama presenting Ride's posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom to O'Shaughnessy. It's a beautiful moment of acknowledgement too-long delayed — one that would never happen today. Perhaps the most heart-rending lesson 'Sally' imparts is that that final frontier keeps getting moved out of reach.