Eileen Collins Explains Why The Space Shuttle Had To End
The first female commander of the space shuttle talks about space safety and her love of sci-fi.
As NASA breaks into new frontiers, interest in human spaceflight seems to be enjoying a buzzy renaissance. In both science fiction and actual spaceflight, 2026 feels like a year in which the exploration of space is also leading to a reassessment of the recent past.
But before SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Artemis, the public American symbol of spaceflight was NASA’s space shuttle program. And one of the most pivotal pioneers of the space shuttle days was astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman to be a commander of a space shuttle. Collins is the subject of a new documentary from director Hannah Berryman, Spacewoman, which chronicles her life and career.
As U.S. astronaut careers go, Collins’ life in the space program was incredible. After training, waiting, and preparation that began in 1989, Collins first flew a space shuttle, the Discovery, in 1995, for the STS-63 mission. That mission today is called the “near-Mir” mission because it had a rendezvous with the space station Mir, which was still operational at that time. Although the 1980s and 1990s were an expansive time for women in NASA, Collins, Susan Still, and Pamela Melroy — who later served as the NASA deputy administrator — were the only three women to pilot the famous space shuttles. But for some who are still nostalgic about this era, NASA, and miss the time of the space shuttle, Collins tells Inverse that although the shuttle was great, it was never a long-term solution. And there’s one major reason why current systems are preferable: safety.
“Today’s astronauts who fly on the top of the SpaceX Falcon 9, they have an ejection system. In an explosion, they could come down on a parachute into the ocean, and they can survive,” Collins says.
So while Collins feels the way many ‘80s kids do, and says that “the four orbiters that we flew were like family members and they kind of took on a character of their own,” she points out that whatever one might think of the look and feel of a contemporary spacecraft like the SpaceX Falcon 9, these systems are much safer. On top of this, Collins also points out that on a Falcon 9, “there’s no way their heat shield can be damaged.”
As detailed by director Berryman in Spacewoman, Collins knows a thing or two about what it’s like to return to a space program after everything was shut down due to safety concerns. “My flight [STS-114 in 2005] was the return-to-flight mission,” Collins says. “I was the commander of that flight after the accident... It was the safest shuttle flight that had ever happened up to that period because we had fixed all of these little glitches that had developed over the years.”
Eileen Collins in 1997.
The documentary — which is a must-watch for anyone interested in spaceflight — is, in some ways, an expansion of Collins’ memoir Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars. But one aspect the documentary doesn’t explore in detail is something Collins is happy to talk about when prompted: her love of science fiction, specifically Star Trek and Star Wars.
“I must have been in fourth or fifth grade, and Star Trek came out on Friday nights. I never missed it. My mom would put the popcorn on, and the four of us kids would watch Star Trek while she was in the kitchen talking with her friends,” Collins recalls. “And then in college, I watched the reruns. I’m a huge fan.”
Collins also connects her love of sci-fi to her career in space in huge ways, noting she read a lot of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke as a child. But she also says that nobody can underestimate the impact Star Wars had on real aviators.
“In my early days in the Air Force, we were all naming our callsigns after the people in Star Wars,” she says. “It was really cool to watch these sci-fi films and project ourselves onto the characters. I love the fact that movies and sci-fi can really inspire our imagination and make us be more creative people.”
