KSL Movie Show review: ‘Sally’ a documentary about an extraordinary individual
Jun 20, 2025, 6:00 AM
Sally movie poster.
Editor’s note: This is an editorial piece. An editorial, like a news article, is based on fact but also shares opinions. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and are not associated with our newsroom.
Every once in a while, an extraordinary individual pops back into the public conscience that we possibly haven’t heard from in years, only to discover something we never realized was an integral part of their lives.
Sally Ride became the first American woman in space at the age of 32. She always dreamed of possibly becoming an astronaut, but up until 1977, it was strictly a man’s world. Well, in that same year, NASA began accepting applications for a new batch of astronauts and a little more than 8,000 people applied. Out of that, a group of 35 was chosen, six were women and Sally was one of them.
And once you look at her resumé, you’ll see why she stood out.
She was a graduate of Stanford University, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics, a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature, later adding a Master of Science degree and a Doctorate in Physics. She was also a collegiate tennis player, but gave it up when she realized to reach an elite level, she’d have to spend eight hours a day in perfecting her skills.
She instead became a mission specialist after completing her astronaut training and was assigned to the STS-7 Mission aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, which launched in June of 1983.
At the pre-launch press conference, reporters asked her dumb things like – do you think the flight will affect your reproductive organs? Or do you weep when things go wrong on the job? Even the toiletries kit put together by NASA dudes for a woman suggested she would probably need 100 tampons for a six-day mission. She got a kick out of that one.
Now, by the time this documentary got to the actual launch and those famous words “throttle up” were uttered – I thought the spacecraft was going to explode – and this would be the end of our story.
What I had forgotten, was that the Challenger went up several times, and in fact, Sally would go up again as a crew member of STS-41-C in October of 1984 as the robot arm specialist. It wouldn’t be until a cold morning in January of 1986 that the Challenger disaster shocked the world, exploding just over a minute into the launch, killing all seven crew members onboard.
Sally was so well-respected, she was assigned to the presidential commission, the only astronaut on the panel, to try and determine what happened. It was Sally that provided the information discreetly to the head of the commission that the O-rings provided by Morton-Thiokol, would stiffen up at low temperatures and that weakness would eventually be identified as the cause of the Challenger explosion.
Eventually, Sally Ride would resign from NASA, concerned over potential safety issues that she believed were not being fully addressed, even though years later, both Presidents Clinton and Obama would invite her to become NASA Administrator. She politely declined both offers.
So why are we going back into all this after all these years? After her death in 2012 of pancreatic cancer, Sally’s life partner of 27 years, Tam O’Shaughnessy, a scientist in her own right, revealed that Sally Ride was afraid what would happen, if the world found out that she was gay. Here, one of the bravest, heroic women in our nation’s history was worried what people would think of her if they learned she was a lesbian.
That makes me sad; that she never felt she could be her true self. And I personally, am profoundly grateful, that National Geographic, Disney + and Hulu would bring the rest of her story to light.
SALLY (A-) Rated TV-14 Featuring archival footage and sound from Sally Ride, plus numerous interviews with not only her partner Tamara O’Shaughnessy, but NASA colleagues as well. Produced and directed by Cristina Costantini (“Science Fair” “Own the Room”) Running time: 103 minutes.
