Love letters written in zero gravity

Like many American kids who grew up between 1981 and 2011, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut and orbiting the Earth in a Space Shuttle. I read and watched everything I could about the different spacecraft and astronauts. So, I was intrigued when American novelist Taylor Jenkins Reid published her 2025 historical novel, Atmosphere: A Love Story about two of the first American women to join the astronaut corps and fly aboard the space shuttle. While the novel frames itself as a sapphic romance set to the backdrop of space, the story is better read as a love letter to these glass-ceiling-breaking astronauts. It is striking how closely the novel's protagonist resembles Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly into space. Reid does a skilful job exploring these women's battles with sexism and homophobia. The one area where Reid could have gone further was in exploring NASA's role in her fictional depiction of an explosion on the shuttle Navigator, which was clearly modelled after the 1986  tragedy.

The story centred around astronomer Joan Goodwin. She left her professorship at Rice University in the late 1970s to join the astronaut corps just as it was beginning to open to women and people of color for the new shuttle programme. Reid describes Joan hearing about an actual 1977 recruitment commercial starring Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols targeting women and racial minorities, "This is your NASA, a space agency embarked on a mission to improve the quality of life on planet Earth right now." A romantic and an idealist, this language spoke directly to Joan's core identity. She had been trying to touch the stars ever since she was a little girl. For Joan, humanity and the universe are inherently interconnected. She argues that humans as a species are custom built to explore the stars. Reid writes in her 'Author's Note' that she hopes Joan will inspire her readers to look up at the stars in wonder.

Despite Joan's idealism, Reid doesn't shy away from the real challenges that she and the other women astronauts faced. Some members of the all-male, military pilot section of the astronaut corps bristled at the women's presence. Joan and the other women had to endure comments about their resiliency and a string of barely veiled sexual innuendos. While most of the women in Joan's group chose to ignore the comments or even laugh at them for fear of showing weakness, Joan directly confronted anyone she perceived as making a sexist comment or action. Nor does Joan deny feeling the weight of the intense public scrutiny that she and the other women faced. Joan and her colleagues discussed among themselves how if anything went wrong on Ride's history-making flight, she would be blamed and future missions involving women could be set back. Reid rightly reminds her readers of the many obstacles that these first American women astronauts had to overcome and the pressure that they felt from the historical precedent-setting nature of their missions.      

Reid brings much deserved attention to the presence and contributions of members of the LGBTQ+ community amongst the first women astronauts and the unspoken, but very real discrimination they faced. Joan falls in love with fellow astronaut Vanessa Ford. While Joan is initially unaware of her own sexuality, she is drawn to Vanessa and the two share an unspoken attraction. Their relationship starts as a friendship before blossoming into a full-blown romance.

Joan and Vanessa lived under the constant fear of being outed and potentially losing their jobs. At the time, NASA considered same sex relationships a security risk, potentially exposing employees to blackmail. The two women are forced to recognise the fact that if they continue their relationship, they risk their careers. Reid captures the dilemma of queer astronauts. Reide herself famously kept her sexual orientation hidden from the public until her death in 2012; when she announced her partnership with Tam O'Shaughnessy in her obituary—the first coming-out of a NASA astronaut.

Another aspect that feels underexplored is Reid's portrayal of a fictional 1984 satellite explosion aboard the shuttle Navigator, which killed or incapacitated everyone onboard except for Ford. The accident was clearly inspired by the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy that happened in 1986, where a malfunction in one of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters led to an explosion that destroyed the spacecraft, killing the entire crew. Reid portrays the Navigator explosion as a random accident that couldn't have been predicted. However, a presidential commission determined that NASA's decision to launch Challenger in cold temperatures was flawed and unknowingly went against the advice of the contractors who built the solid rocket boosters. I would have liked Reid to explore any role that NASA may have played in the explosion.

Ultimately, I enjoyed reading about Joan's journey to become an astronaut and the evolution of her relationship with Vanessa. The novel offers a unique window into the experiences of the first generation of women in the astronaut corps and the various challenges that they faced. I just wish Reid had gone deeper in exploring NASA's role in the Navigator explosion.

Jonah Kent Richards is a Shakespeare screen adaptation scholar, an English teacher, and contributor for Star Books and Literature.