Mary’s own fascination with space began when she sat up to watch Apollo 11 land on the moon. “Granted, I was six months old and don’t actually remember it, but it’s one of the stories my parents always tell and I think stitched space into my identity from my early childhood,” she told. “My conscious memories are of the shuttle program and how close the future of spaceflight seemed to be.”

However, the author said it took her a while to realize that women hadn’t had a big part of it. “I remember the fanfare involved in Sally Ride’s first flight but did not fully understand that women had been actively excluded from the early space program. To me, she was the first because space exploration was still fairly new. I was wrong, of course. But it gave me the luxury of growing up believing that women could do anything and were welcome in every field. As an adult, looking at the history of the early program, and the opportunities that were denied to women, based solely on gender, I get ranty.”