Wearing T-shirts that read “Ride, Sally Ride,” Americans cheered as Dr. Sally K. Ride became the first American woman in space as she blasted off aboard STS-7 on June 18, 1983.1 Ms. Magazine celebrated that Ride's flight penetrated “NASA's world of ‘flaming phallic rockets,’” symbolizing American women's breakthrough and visibility in male-dominated spaceflight. Her flight took place as Americans attempted to navigate women's growing independence and the pop-culture world of Three's Company, Annie Hall, stay-at-home dads and Erma Bombeck. At the same time, rugged indi¬vidual masculinity reemerged in films such as Rocky, Rambo, The Right Stuff, and Top Gun as Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schlafly blamed feminism for social ills. Ride's feat came at a time of clashing American gender roles, an identity crisis following the wave of defeat in Vietnam, civil rights and a new reusable spacecraft that once again promised hope.

American spaceflight needed to be reinvigorated as Americans grew increasingly bored with space feats. Between 1973 and 1979, Skylab circled the Earth. On July 15, 1975, NASA launched the first Apollo-Soyuz mission, and it appeared the Americans and Soviets made détente in space. Jet pilot team¬work prevailed, and Americans grew tired of the “pale, male, and stale” astro¬nauts. NASA proposed a new space transportation system (STS) to “salvage human spaceflight” at a time when “ordinary passengers who might receive little training, and could be almost anyone” could fly in a reusable shuttle.

Matthew H. Hersch's Inventing the American Astronaut argues that the shuttle, and the diversity of the astronauts aboard, democratized American spaceflight technology.

On May 5, 1961, NASA launched the first American astronaut into space aboard the Mercury craft Freedom 7. The feat came less than a month after the Soviets blasted cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit on April 12, 1961. Aboard his capsule, Vostok I, Gagarin spent a total of one hundred eighty minutes in space. He orbited the Earth once. Shepard's flight lasted around fifteen minutes, about five of which were in space. He did not orbit the Earth but rather completed a suborbital flight. However, the American public discourse lauded Shepard's feat as more impressive than Gagarin's because Shepard exercised control over his craft. Even Shepard recalled in his memoir that while shifting his capsule he shouted out, “We’re doing something in space on our own. We’re first with it! Manual control of a spaceship. Dyn-o-mite!”Shepard's emphasis on being first with manual control acted as a meta¬phor for a reinvigorated masculinity as the Americans trailed the Soviets into space. Jet test pilot-controlled spacecraft defined the American astro¬naut image. The spacecraft and its technology in relation to the astronaut's body created a cultural narrative of spaceflight that brought hope for the future. This astronaut-controlled spacecraft railed in the face of a perceived flagging American vigor. The first astronauts reinvigorated masculinity as they performed death-defying feats while mastering technology. They were men who performed masculinity through Michael W. Hankins’ fighter-pilot characteristics of aggressiveness, independence, heroic imagery, technology and community that depicted astronauts as metaphorical medieval space knights. But the first astronauts were also men who were reliant on automa¬tion, button-pushing and teams of engineers for successful spaceflights on the New Frontier.