Florida's Film, Television and the Arts Magazine
Spacewoman
The best astronauts see problems as challenges. Spacewoman, featuring Colonel Eileen Collins, gives us an intimate look at women in the space shuttle program and the challenges they still face to reach their dreams.
Collins was the first woman shuttle commander, piloting space shuttle Discovery into the history books. Born in Elmira, NY, the introverted child of a working-class mom and a bar-owning alcoholic father, she wanted to command a spaceship like Captain Kirk. And every decision she made brought her closer to her goal.
In 1978, Collins was among the first women to attended Oklahoma’s pilot training program. To fly the space shuttle, you had to be a pilot because it was designed to fly like an airplane. Collins applied to and was accepted at the USAF test pilot school. She tells us, ‘for every test pilot mission, you must push the envelope to see the capabilities of each airplane’. Though she consistently earned top marks, she found herself fighting serious misogyny among the more senior staff. Yet she persevered.
Did Eileen have nerves of steel? “She sure did”, states Marcia Dunn, the Space Correspondent for the Associated Press. “But she had to be better than the men to be equal.” Having a woman at the controls was hard for many of the men in the 1970’s and ‘80’s to digest. Sadly, after much progress, the nation now appears to be moving backwards.
Scenes in Spacewoman, inside the shuttles and the space station, have rarely been seen by anyone outside the NASA family. They add humanity to the missions, which is rarely communicated through everyday newsclips. We are treated to scenes of meals between astronauts and cosmonauts, phone calls back home, time with the families prior to launch. Her husband, a pilot himself, was always extremely supportive, even while acknowledging the danger. Bridget, Collin’s daughter, gives her own perspective on what it’s like to be the child of an astronaut, knowing every day that your mom may die in space.
There’s only one time when Collin’s mask of assurance and control slips. When she is questioned by a male member of the press after her groundbreaking return to Earth, she’s asked ‘what is it like to juggle wife, mother and astronaut’. Not one of the men are ever asked ‘what is it like to juggle husband, father and astronaut’. You can see the disappointment on her face that she wasn’t asked about the mission, her responsibilities or her experience, but she goes to great lengths to quickly cover her emotions.
The anxiety of watching Discovery launch after the fatal flights of Challenger and Columbia is palpable, even as a viewer, knowing Discovery’s mission was successful. Spacewoman is an extraordinary tale of a woman pushing the boundaries of space and perceptions, who refused to allow anyone to pigeonhole her.
