Women in Science and Wheelchairs in Space
This week on the show, we interviewed science historian Erik Conway about the upcoming Artemis II mission to the moon. When I heard the segment, the first person I thought of was Michaela Benthaus.
In late December 2025, I watched two people lift Benthaus out of a spacecraft and place her into her manual wheelchair after her 10-minute flight into space. That day, my soul sprouted a new leaf.
I have cerebral palsy, which means that my brain was damaged when I was an infant, and it has a hard time communicating with my body. Cerebral palsy manifests in many different ways. In my case, it means that I have a speech disability (here's a sample if you're interested), and I use a wheelchair much like Benthaus's most of the time.
Benthaus is the first wheelchair user to ever go into space. She is a mechatronics and aerospace engineer at the European Space Agency and reached out to a retired space engineer, Hans Koenigsmann, to see if she could pursue her dream of becoming an astronaut. Koenigsmann organized a trip through Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space tourism company. The pair eventually took off in a sub-orbital launch vehicle that skyrocketed (pun-intended) just past the Kármán line— the legal point at which the atmosphere ends and outer space begins— before returning to Earth.
Now is the point in most disability stories where the writer goes on about how Benthaus is overcoming her disability. I'm not going to do that.
Instead, let me turn your attention to another segment in this week's show, Steve Curwood's interview with Rachel Ignotofsky, the author and illustrator of Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World. The book highlights the stories of female scientists using bright illustrations and accessible snippets. Ignotofsky says that she wrote the book, in part, to inspire girls to enter STEM:
"I want [young girls] to be able to see that, no matter what your gender is, you can pursue your passions, that there's no such thing as a girl’s job and a boy’s job."
As someone who was raised as a girl, though I never was one, this should have resonated with me. It didn't. I am disabled before I am any gender. Growing up, I wasn't told that I couldn't do certain jobs because I was a girl. I wasn't told anything about any jobs at all.
I don't remember anyone ever directly saying, "You can't do that because you're disabled." But it was implied when other children were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up and I wasn't. It was implied by the near total absence of disabled adults on television. It was implied by the thousands of hours and dollars spent on medical procedures and therapy to make me less disabled. And by how little time and money there was leftover for anything else.
When I was in elementary school, I dreamt of being everything from an artist to a zookeeper to a teacher, and even for a hot minute, Spiderman. By the time I reached middle school, and it was clear that I was only ever going to become more disabled, all I wanted to be when I grew up was able-bodied.
This is the part of the story where, instead of me telling you how inspiring or courageous or whatever I am for overcoming that instinct, I will redirect your attention to the people who carried Michaela Benthaus from the spacecraft to her wheelchair.
To be clear, Benthaus is a badass. Her sheer determination to chase "yes" when the world told her "no" is inspiring. But most of you aren't wheelchair users, so that's not the story I want you to focus on. It's not yours. Instead, I invite you to think about the able-bodied people who made that historic space flight possible.
When I was in 7th grade, my literature teacher had us write poetry and short stories. And it turned out that I was a really good writer. (The best in the class, if I do say so myself.) My teacher recognized my talent and encouraged me, so I wrote more and more and became better and better. By the end of the school year, I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. I never changed my mind.
Luckily, parents redirected resources from therapy and surgery to school literary magazines and writing programs. At Kenyon College's summer teen writing program, my classmates pushed me up and down the gravel path through campus. A few years later, Oberlin College, my undergrad, built a hut beside the irreparably inaccessible creative writing house so that I could store my wheelchair out of the rain, clamber up the stairs, and access the events held there.
All of that work led me to Emerson College's master of Publishing and Writing program, which led me to an internship with LOE, which landed me this job.
Similarly, Benthaus couldn't have made that spaceflight without the contributions of many able-bodied people, from the people who carried her to Hans Koenigsmann to the construction workers who built the elevator to the spacecraft to the Blue Origin executives ready to make headlines.
Benthaus probably won't be the last wheelchair user in space. In fact, Paralympian John McFall is set to become the first disabled person to go to the ISS.
If you're an able-bodied person hearing these stories, I encourage you to ignore the narrative of "disabled person overcomes obstacles" and think instead of Women in Science. While we applaud women who overcome sexism to build careers in STEM, we don't only celebrate their accomplishments. We bemoan the men perpetuating sexism in the first place.
Don't sit on the sidelines and cheer on disabled people as we push through obstacles on our way to successful careers. Be one of the able-bodied people who stands up and removes those obstacles. That's how we all reach for the stars.
El Wilson
Assistant Producer
