Mercury 13

Jerrie Cobb with a Mercury capsule

Mercury 13 refers to thirteen American women who, as part of a privately funded program, underwent the same physiological screening tests as the astronauts selected by NASA on April 9, 1959 for Project Mercury. The term was coined in 1959 by Hollywood producer James Cross as a comparison to the Mercury Seven name given to the selected male astronauts; however, the Mercury 13 were not part of NASA's astronaut program, never flew in space and never met as a group.

In the 1960s some of the women lobbied the White House and Congress for inclusion of women in the astronaut program, even appearing before a congressional committee. Clare Boothe Luce wrote an article for LIFE magazine publicizing the women and criticizing NASA.

History

William Randolph Lovelace II, former Flight Surgeon and later, chairman of the NASA Special Advisory Committee on Life Science, helped develop the tests for NASA's male astronauts and became curious to know how women would do taking the same tests. In 1960, Lovelace and Brig. General Donald Flickinger invited Geraldyn "Jerrie" Cobb to undergo the same rigorous challenges as the men.[1]

Cobb, already an accomplished pilot, became the first American woman (and the only one of the Mercury 13) to undergo and pass all three phases of testing. Lovelace and Cobb recruited 19 more women to take the tests, financed by the husband of world-renowned aviator Jacqueline Cochran. Thirteen of the women passed the same tests as the Mercury 7. Some were disqualified due to brain or heart anomalies. The results were announced at a conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

Candidate background

All of the candidates were accomplished pilots; Lovelace and Cobb reviewed the records of over 700 women pilots in order to select candidates, and did not invite anyone with less than 1,000 hours of flight experience. Some of them may have been recruited through the Ninety-Nines, a women pilot's organization of which Cobb was also a member. Some women responded after hearing about the opportunity through friends.

This group of women that Jerrie Cobb called the First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLATs) accepted the challenge to be tested for a research program.[1]

Tests

Since doctors didn't know what stresses astronauts would experience in space, tests ranged from the typical X-ray and general body physicals to the atypical, in which the women had to swallow a rubber tube so their stomach acids could be tested. Doctors tested the reflexes in the ulnar nerve of the woman's forearms using electric shock. To induce vertigo, ice water was shot into their ears, freezing the inner ear so doctors could time how quickly they recovered. The women were pushed to exhaustion using specially weighted stationary bicycles to test their respiration. They subjected themselves to many more invasive and uncomfortable tests.[2]

The 13

In the end, thirteen women passed the same Phase I physical examinations that the Lovelace Foundation had developed as part of NASA’s astronaut selection process. Those thirteen women were:

Jane Hart was the oldest candidate, at 41, and mother of eight. Wally Funk, was the youngest, at 23.[1] Marion and Janet Dietrich were twin sisters.[3]

Additional tests

A few women took additional tests. Jerrie Cobb, Rhea Hurrle, and Wally Funk went to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma for Phase II testing, consisting of an isolation tank test and psychological evaluations. Because of other family and job commitments, not all of the women were able to take these tests, however. Instead, once Cobb had passed the Phase III tests (advanced aeromedical examinations using military equipment and jet aircraft), the group prepared to gather in Pensacola, Florida at the Naval School of Aviation Medicine to follow suit. Two of the women quit their jobs in order to be able to attend. A few days before they were to report, however, the women received telegrams abruptly canceling the Pensacola testing. Without an official NASA request to run the tests, the United States Navy would not allow the use of its facilities for an unofficial project.

It is sometimes claimed that Funk also completed the third phase of testing, but the claim is misleading. Following cancellation of the tests, she found ways to continue being tested. She did complete most of the Phase III tests, but only here and there as she was able, not as part of a specific program. Cobb passed all the training exercises, ranking in the top 2% of all astronaut candidates of both genders.[4]

House Committee Hearing on Sex Discrimination

Jerrie Cobb immediately flew to Washington, D.C. to try to have the testing program resumed. She and Janey Hart wrote to President John F. Kennedy and visited Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. Finally, on 17 and 18 July 1962, Representative Victor Anfuso (D-NY) convened public hearings before a special Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics.[5] Significantly, the hearings investigated the possibility of gender discrimination two years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made that illegal, making these hearings a marker of how ideas about women's rights permeated political discourse even before they were enshrined in law.

Cobb and Hart testified about the benefits of Lovelace's private project. Jacqueline Cochran largely undermined their testimony, talking about her concerns that setting up a special program to train a woman astronaut could hurt the space program. NASA representatives George Low and Astronauts John Glenn and Scott Carpenter testified that under NASA's selection criteria women could not qualify as astronaut candidates. Glenn also believed that "The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.".[6] They correctly stated that NASA required all astronauts to be graduates of military jet test piloting programs and have engineering degrees, although John Glenn conceded that he had been assigned to NASA's Mercury Project without having earned the required college degree.[7] In 1962, women were still barred from Air Force training schools, so no American women could become test pilots of military jets. Despite the fact that several of the Mercury 13 had been employed as civilian test pilots, and many had considerably more propeller aircraft flying time than the male astronaut candidates (although not in high-performance jets, like the men), NASA refused to consider granting an equivalency for their hours in propeller airplanes.[8] Although some members of the Subcommittee were sympathetic to the women's arguments, because of this disparity in experience no action resulted.

Executive Assistant to Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Liz Carpenter, drafted a letter to NASA administrator James E. Webb questioning these requirements, but Johnson did not send the letter, instead writing across it, "Let's stop this now!"[9]

Media attention

Lovelace's privately funded women's testing project received renewed media attention when Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space on June 16, 1963. In response, Clare Boothe Luce published an article[10] in Life criticizing NASA and American decision makers. By including photographs of all thirteen Lovelace finalists, she made the names of all thirteen women public for the first time. (Significant media coverage had already spotlighted some of the participants, however.)

First American woman astronaut

Seven surviving FLATS attending the STS-63 launch.(from left): Gene Nora Jessen, Wally Funk, Jerrie Cobb, Jerri Truhill, Sarah Rutley, Myrtle Cagle and Bernice Steadman.

Although both Cobb and Cochran made separate appeals for years afterward to restart a women's astronaut testing project, the U.S. civil space agency did not select any female astronaut candidates until Astronaut Group 8 in 1978, which selected astronauts for the operational Space Shuttle program. Astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983 on STS-7, and Eileen Collins was the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle during STS-63 in 1995. Collins also became the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission during STS-93 in 1999. In 2005, she commanded NASA's return to flight mission, STS-114. At Collins' invitation, seven of the surviving Lovelace finalists attended her first launch,[11] ten of the FLATs attended her first command mission, and she has flown mementos for almost all of them.

Honors and awards

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Weitekamp, Margaret A. (January 28, 2010). "Lovelace's woman in space program". NASA History Program Office. Retrieved April 20, 2018.
  2. ↑ Anfuso, Victor L. "Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on the Selection of Astronauts". U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved Aug 22, 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 Lopez, Cory (2008-06-17). "Bay Area pilot Janet Christine Dietrich dies". San Francisco Chronicle. Hearst Communications. Retrieved April 20, 2018.
  4. ↑ "Jerrie Cobb Poses beside Mercury Capsule". Archived from the original on December 24, 2011. Retrieved August 15, 2017.
  5. ↑ Qualifications for Astronauts: Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on the Selection of Astronauts Archived 2015-12-11 at the Wayback Machine., U.S. House of Representatives, 87th Cong. (1962)
  6. ↑ Nolan, Stephanie (October 12, 2002). "One giant leap – backward: Part 2". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on September 13, 2004. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
  7. ↑ Martha Ackman. The Mercury Thirteen: The true story of thirteen women and the dream of space flight. Random House, New York, 2003, p. 166.
  8. ↑ Stephanie Nolen. Promised the Moon: The untold story of the first women in the space race. Penguin Canada, Toronto, 2002, p. 240.
  9. ↑ Dwayne Day (July 15, 2013). "You've come a long way, baby!". The Space Review.
  10. ↑ Luce, Clare Boothe. (June 28, 1963). "The U.S. Team Is Still Warming Up The Bench but some people simply never get the message". Life Magazine, pages: 32-33.
  11. ↑ Funk, Wally. "The Mercury 13 Story". The Ninety-Nines. Archived from the original on 2009-05-07. Retrieved 2009-06-12.
  12. ↑ "Honoring the Mercury 13 Women". University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh. May 12, 2007.
  13. ↑ Lucinda Hahn (June 20, 2005). "Adler board honors women who reached for the stars". Chicago Tribune.
  14. ↑ "Captain Marvel (2012)" #1 (July 18, 2012)
  15. ↑ "The Astronaut Wives Club salutes the female astronauts that America wouldn't". 20 August 2015.
  16. ↑ Eric Kelsey (April 19, 2018). "'Mercury 13' chronicles women in 1960s who trained for space flight". Reuters.
  17. ↑ "Mercury 13 documentary on Netflix". Netflix.

References

  • Weitekamp, Margaret (2004). Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America's First Women in Space Program. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-7994-9.
  • Marconi, Elaine M. (March 22, 2005). "Women Who Reach for the Stars". Retrieved March 23, 2006.
  • Weitekamp, Margaret A. (August 17, 2005). "Lovelace's Woman in Space Program". NASA History Division. Retrieved March 23, 2006.
  • Funk, Wally. "THE MERCURY 13 STORY". The Ninety-Nines. Archived from the original on April 8, 2006. Retrieved March 23, 2006.
  • Oberg, James. "The Mercury 13: setting the story straight". The Space Review. Retrieved May 14, 2007.
  • Ackmann, Martha (2003). The Mercury 13: the untold story of thirteen American women and the dream of space flight. New York: Random House.
  • Anfuso, Victor L. "Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on the Selection of Astronauts". U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved Aug 22, 2017.
  • Mercury 13 web site
  • NPR feature on the FLATs
  • Alexis Madrigal, "The Women Who Would Have Been Sally Ride", The Atlantic, July 24, 2012. (Tagline: "The truth is: the sexism of the day overwhelmed the science of the day.")
  • Mercury 13: the untold story of women testing for spaceflight in the 1960s, Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian, April 18, 2018
  • Ryan, Kathy L.; Loeppky, Jack A.; Kilgore, Donald E. "A forgotten moment in physiology: the Lovelace Woman in Space Program (1960–1962)". Advances in Physiology Education. 33 (3): 157–164. doi:10.1152/advan.00034.2009.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.