Coffee & Conversation: ‘The Six’ by Loren Grush

Wednesday, August 13, 2025
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

When NASA sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s, the agency excluded women from the corps. They argued that only military test pilots- a group that was made up exclusively of men at the time- had the right skills. It was an era in which women were steered away from jobs in science and deemed unqualified for space flight.

Eventually, though, NASA recognized its blunder and opened the application process to a wider array of hopefuls, without regard to race or gender. From a candidate pool of 8,000, six elite women were selected in 1978: Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon.

In The Six, Loren Grush, an acclaimed journalist, shows how these brilliant and courageous women endured claustrophobic media attention, underwent rigorous survival training and prepared for years all so they could take multi-million-dollar payloads into orbit. Together, these six women helped build the tools that make the space program run. Everyone knows of Ride’s history-making first space ride and of Resnik’s sacrifice in the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion; however, Grush illustrates each of the six made their mark.

Coffee and tea will be provided.

If you have any questions, please contact Natalie at ftprograms@cc-pl.org.  Please see all our program offerings in our online newsletter at https://www.cc-pl.org/connections.​

Carrico/Fort Thomas Branch