“It's just a fact, the men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes. That women are not in this field is just a fact of our social order.” -John Glenn

In early 1978, NASA announced the names of 35 “astronaut candidates” (ASCANs) selected to train for the new Space Shuttle program. Among the people selected were four men of color and six (white) women. It was an integration that was insufficient but long overdue. The six women would go on to smash NASA’s glass ceiling in the astronaut corps, dismantling barriers and clearing the way for pioneers like Mae Jemison, America’s first female Black astronaut, who would blaze a trail of her own beginning in 1987.

Loren Grush’s The Six is a well written chronicle of the difficulties, challenges, and struggles encountered whenever a Boy’s Club is encroached upon by uterus-bearing brainiacs who are just as capable (sometimes MORE capable) than their testicle-toting antagonists. Remember the names—Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Kathy Sullivan, Anna Fisher, Margaret “Rhea” Seddon, and Shannon Lucid.