Meredith Bagby on A New Kind of Astronaut

When NASA accepted its first class of civilian astronauts in 1978, it welcomed a historic group marked by many firsts: the first American woman, the first African American, the first Jewish person, the first Asian American, the first gay person, and the first mother. This week, Meredith Bagby, author of _The New Guys: The Historic Class of Astronauts That Broke Barriers and Changed the Face of Space Trave_l, spoke with Richard Aldous about this landmark class of astronauts who propelled the Space Shuttle era and defined a generation of space travel.