Amanda Ngọc Nguyễn went from a crime survivor to a groundbreaking lawmaker and astronaut. Her story is a testament to how personal tragedy can fuel changes that impact millions. In 2025, she crossed another boundary—this time literally—by traveling beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
Fighting Injustice
While Amanda Nguyen was a Harvard student, she became a victim of rape. She made a decision at that point that would allow her to pursue her dreams of working at NASA. She reported the crime anonymously, hoping to retain control over her life and future. However, she was unaware that Massachusetts law gave just six months to take legal action with anonymous evidence kits.
Discovering this legal loophole was as shocking to her as the assault itself. The system, intended to protect victims, instead forced them into an impossible choice: reveal their identity and all traumatic details immediately, or lose any chance at justice in the future. Nguyen faced a dilemma that extended beyond her personal case.
Instead of accepting the absurd law, the twenty-something decided to work for change. She founded Rise and began drafting a bill to secure fundamental rights for sexual assault survivors across the United States.
What seemed impossible for someone with no political connections became her mission for years to come.
Success in Congress
The Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act passed unanimously through the US Congress in 2016—an almost unheard-of phenomenon in an era of deep political division. Nguyen proved that well-crafted legislation and determination could break through even the hardest partisan barriers.
The legislation guaranteed survivors of sexual assault the right to free medical forensic exams and required the preservation of evidence kits for a set period. It also established mandatory notification of victims about their rights and the status of their evidence. These seemingly basic provisions did not previously exist in US federal law.
The legislative breakthrough brought Nguyen international recognition. In 2019, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her human rights advocacy. Foreign Policy magazine named her one of the 100 most influential thinkers worldwide, and Time recognized her as one of the most significant women of 2022, praising her role in transforming the US legal system.
From Activist to Astronaut
The dream of space accompanied Nguyen since her college days interning at NASA and researching exoplanets at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Activism never overtook those aspirations; it merely postponed them. In 2021, she began training as a scientist-astronaut candidate at the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences.
Her research interests for spaceflight centered on women’s health, including menstruation in microgravity. This subject was no accident. Nguyen openly spoke about NASA’s historic exclusion of women from astronaut programs—often citing menstruation as an obstacle. She wanted to show those arguments were pretext, not science.
On April 14, 2025, Amanda Nguyen launched aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule, becoming the first woman of Vietnamese descent to cross the threshold of space.
During the flight, she conducted experiments on wound care in weightlessness and tested new spacesuit materials. She also brought 169 lotus seeds provided by the Vietnamese Space Center to study cosmic impact on plant growth.
Memoir and the Cosmos
In March 2025, Nguyen’s memoir, „Saving Five,” was published, debuting on The New York Times bestseller list and confirming her story resonates with a wide audience. The title refers to five versions of herself at different ages—five, fifteen, twenty-two, and thirty—whom she guides through the healing process.
Nguyen weaves two narratives. The first is a documentary account of her legislative fight and movement-building that led to the law’s passage. The second is more literary, tracing the emotional steps of recovery after trauma. This dual structure allows readers to understand both her public journey and deeply private ordeal.
Her memoir also reveals that sexual violence wasn’t the only trauma in Nguyen’s life. The book addresses her turbulent childhood as the daughter of Vietnamese boat people—refugees who risked their lives at sea fleeing the aftermath of war.
Rory Thornfield
Rory's grandfather left behind a wartime diary filled with accounts of a minor Burma skirmish that history books never mentioned. Reading it, Rory realized: behind every famous battle are dozens of forgotten struggles, each with its own human drama.
His preferred topics: The overlooked corners of military history – secondary campaigns, shadow battalions, local conflicts that never made headlines. From medieval sieges to twentieth-century expeditions, he focuses on the soldiers, not the generals. The people who faced impossible choices and carried those experiences forever.
Rory strips away the romanticism without losing respect for those who served. He combines tactical analysis with personal stories, examining human endurance and moral complexity rather than celebrating warfare. His writing is balanced, thoughtful, and deeply researched.
Outside work, Rory visits forgotten battlefields (now quiet farmland), photographs war memorials nobody tends anymore, and interviews veterans' families.