Joan turned her attention to the Columbia. She pictured John Young and Bob Crippen strapped into their chairs, lying back, parallel to the ground. Were they as scared as she was? Or was it like a hurricane? Those outside of it were caught up in the chaos, but inside—right in the eye of it—there was calm.

All around the country, little boys were dreaming of their futures today. Little boys who, when asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, would proudly declare, “Astronaut!” and would dress up as one for Halloween.

She wondered if, soon, there might be a woman up there. Joan hadn’t needed to see a woman in that ship in order to believe in herself enough to apply. But she had also never dressed up as an astronaut for Halloween. Not once. For some reason, this made her acutely furious.

“T minus three minutes and forty-five seconds and counting.”

Joan looked at Vanessa, whose eyes were focused on the shuttle. She wanted to tell Vanessa that she knew she would fly it one day. That if any of them got up there, it would be her. But she wasn’t sure about anything after this moment.

There were now plumes of white smoke coming out of the engines.

“T minus one minute and ten seconds and counting.”

Joan prayed that Barbara hadn’t turned on the TV.

“T minus twenty-seven seconds.”

Joan took a breath. She and Vanessa exchanged a look.

And then: “Seven…six…five…” Joan had heard the flight controller count down before, but it had never felt like this. “We’ve gone for main engine start. We have main engine start.”

Joan reached out, unaware of herself, filled with terror, to grab Vanessa’s hand. And Vanessa clutched hers tightly in return, as if her hand had been searching for Joan’s just the same.

The rockets lit up. Fire and smoke emanated from the bottom of the shuttle. Joan felt the bone-crushing pressure of Vanessa’s fingers around hers. The billow of smoke was so big that Joan thought for a moment something had gone wrong. But just as quickly as the smoke arrived, the startlingly bright fire underneath the shuttle erupted into a blaze and the whole thing began to move.

“We have liftoff of America’s first space shuttle, and the shuttle has cleared the tower!”

Joan’s eyes followed the blaze up into the air. She could no longer hear the flight controller or the countdown. All she could hear was the burning of that fire as it rose higher into the sky, the shuttle getting smaller with every passing moment.