25 Years Later, Women in Space Still Power Our Rockets

Before Sally Ride traveled outside of Earth's atmosphere on June 18, 1983, guys' mental image of women in space was basically a composite of Nichelle Nichols and Princess Leia.

What Ride was able to achieve 25 years ago significantly changed that. Suddenly, fiction became reality, and we could seriously begin to contemplate what it would be like to sleep with the hot girl from our science class in zero gravity.

Unfortunately, the perception of female astronauts took a serious hit last year when one decided to go all stalker, strap on an adult diaper and mace a fellow astronaut.

So to wipe that distasteful episode from our collective memory, Asylum would like to take this opportunity to say, "Thank you, Sally Ride," and to look back at some of the fictional ladies in space that allowed our imaginations to drift into far-off galaxies.