A Starry-Eyed Account of Escaping Poverty To Become NASA’s First Woman Commander

Eileen Collins wasn’t the first American woman to go to space, but she has the distinction of being the first female to pilot a space shuttle as well as the first to serve as a flight commander. These honors serve as the basis for “Spacewoman,” a documentary chronicling how the New York-born astronaut went from a troubled working class home to level-headed leader on NASA missions. Starting this evening, the film will play at the Quad Cinema with Ms. Collins in person at select weekend screenings to answer questions.Despite receiving several awards and decorations, such as the Legion of Merit, Ms. Collins doesn’t have the same name recognition as fellow female astronauts Sally Ride and Mae Jemison. This may be attributed to her humble nature, which is evident in archival video from her time at NASA and via contemporary interviews with the trailblazer. This new documentary, and her 2021 autobiography “Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars,” attempt to remedy this oversight, serving both as testament to the American ideals of tenacity, ingenuity, and equality and highlighting Ms. Collins’ singular struggles and achievements. Her inauspicious upbringing did not portend greatness. Born in 1956 in Elmira, a city in New York’s southern tier of counties, she was a mediocre student by her own account. Home life was often turbulent due to her father’s alcoholism, her mother’s issues with mental health, and poverty-level subsistence, which included at times food stamps and public housing. But during happier times her father would take her and her siblings to one of the local hilltops to watch glider aircraft fly (Elmira was once the soaring capital of the world). Inspired by these sights and by science fiction, she determined to take flying lessons, working various odd jobs, including as a janitor in her own school, in order to pay for them.With dreams and ambition connecting with intuition and talent, Ms. Collins recognized early her innate aptitude to pilot. At 21, she was one of the first women chosen for undergraduate pilot training at Oklahoma’s Vance Air Force Base. Afterwards, she pursued a Master of Science degree at Stanford, with her ultimate goal being to become an astronaut. First she had to get into the test pilot program at Edwards Air Force Base, the same one where “The Right Stuff” trained, and after three attempts, she was finally accepted.Throughout the documentary, director Hannah Berryman intercuts the tale of Ms. Colllins’ trajectory with flashbacks to her childhood and segments featuring husband Pat Youngs and her daughter Bridget, reflecting how her family affected and was affected by her career. A fellow commercial pilot, Mr. Youngs is the epitome of a supportive husband in home video footage and contemporary interviews, unthreatened by his wife’s ambition and affable about gender role reversals. Bridget, though, who was born after Ms. Collins’ first space flight in 1995, attributes part of her later diagnosis of anorexia to her mother’s unemotional personality and absences, as well as the anxiety she experienced as a child as one of her parents blasted off on a rocket described by one NASA official as essentially “experimental” and fraught with danger. The main theme drifting through the compelling, if conventional, documentary isn’t the sexism Ms. Collins encountered in her career but the risks involved in it and how she believed in the space program despite these hazards. The 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster is evoked, in addition to the potential hazards when the shuttle returns to Earth’s airspace with no engines and no go-around capabilities. After two flights as pilot, Ms. Collins was placed in charge of an entire mission in 1999, yet this momentous accomplishment was dimmed by a launch marred, through no fault of the commander’s, by a hydrogen leak and other technical issues. Ms. Collins’s command of a second spaceflight in 2005 coincided with NASA’s return to manned space flights two years after the Space Shuttle disaster. The narrative hones in on the problems and fears attached to the occasion of the Space Shuttle Discovery’s launch, its time in space, and subsequent reentry. Ms. Berryman interviews personnel attached to the flight, including Queens-born astronaut Charles Camarda, and it’s clear that much was riding on her ability to navigate various questions and contingencies. As fate would have it, her composure, decision-making, and skills would be put through the wringer when circumstances had her manually flip the shuttle while in orbit to assess potential damage during liftoff. The documentary’s most touching moment arrives during this 2005 mission when we’re shown footage of a video call between Ms. Collins and her family back on Earth, as well as the reactions of her adult daughter viewing the video. One can sense the tension associated with the flight in their interactions as well as the astronaut’s readiness to return home and retire from space travel. Ms. Collins did just that after the Discovery landed safely back. As the film attests, she had dealt with so many stressful situations and achieved so much in her career—not only as a woman but as a pilot and a commander—that her focus on spending more time with her family and less on cosmic concerns was more than well-deserved.

A Starry-Eyed Account of Escaping Poverty To Become NASA’s First Woman Commander

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