Martha Ackmann, autographed by the author and Myrtle Thompson-Cagle, one of the 13.
Random House. ISBN 0-375-75893-3.
Christmas 2006 from Viannah who had heard the author speak at her college.
Read: 2006 December 25 to 2007 February 20, finished at Providence Hospital in Waco, Tx where I was tending to my motherÕs knee replacements.
Reviewed: 2007 May 2
When I was young NASA was young. Men were riding rockets, orbiting the earth, racing to the moon. Men. Yes.
As it became understood in the world conscience that flying in space was the ultimate achievement of mankind and the two great superpowers of the era, the United States and the USSR led the way, the men who did this flying became the heroes of the era.
There was over half a century of flight experience in the world when men started going into space. Pilots had gone to high altitudes and high speeds, exceeding the limits of the human environment in temperature and air pressure, exceeding the speed of sound itself. Still, space was something a good deal further than that. The altitudes and speeds would be at least two dozen times greater yet. How could machines be built to do this? What kind of people would ride in them?
The first men who were selected to be astronauts and cosmonauts were the top specimens of humanity in terms of physique and accomplishment who could be found. In the U.S., they were chosen from the already-elite ranks of military test pilots then subjected to every conceivable physical and mental test (read ÒtortureÓ) that could be devised for them. Only the most perfect specimens were selected. After all, these people would be rocketed in tiny capsules far beyond where anyone had gone before, they would be weightless, maybe sensationless for hours, maybe days, then they would return through a hair-raising, high stress re-entry to the earth, or the sea, maybe to a place of unexpected isolation. For the sake of the program, the public relations, and the subjects themselves, they had to be super-human.
It was in this environment that another class of superhumans had developed. Some of them waited patiently, pursuing their passion for flying while biding their time, but some of their leaders pounded at the same doors that the few chosen men were passing through. These were the women aviators.
There are distinctions in roles and expectation based on gender today, but it is hard for those of us living in the West in the 21st century to really imagine or remember the much sharper and different roles, the much higher barriers that existed for women in the 1950s and 1960s. Yet, women had been aviators from the beginning, despite the prejudices and counter-expectations. There were flying contests for women and many women were participating in them. Several of them were record holders in various forms, virtually always with the qualification Òby a woman.Ó That is, shortest time across the country, highest sustained speed, highest altitude, or longest flight, É by a woman.
What must be kept in mind is that these women, for all of their achievement, had at least three serious obstacles to overcome on their way into the air that equivalent men did not have.
First, they had to dress properly. It didnÕt matter that they had been flying for several hours near the edge of space in sub zero temperatures and nearly no air, wearing an oxygen mask and coveralls if not a pressure suite. After they landed, when they stepped out of the plane, they were expected to be wearing high heels and a skirt and to have their makeup all correct, as if posing for the cover of a magazine.
Second, they were expected not to do such things. Adventures like flying (or trains or radio, or fast cars or gambling or any number of other high risk vices) were ÒmenÕs workÓ and play. Women were to be at home raising kids, gardening, making nice homes and polite conversation, answering phones, filing, and generally doing menial tasks. Such work as this was presumed beyond their mental capacities anyway. Such attitudes are still prevalent in parts of the world today (not totally excluding the West) but at least some American women have proven that much, if not all, of the dominion of men is not exclusive. Nonetheless, all of the women whose tales are recounted here did their womenÕs work and made arrangements to do what they loved and were clearly called to do as well. Some of them were single and stayed that way. Some of them had understanding (or not so understanding) husbands, or mothers with whom they could leave their children for long times on short notice. Some of them had good, stable flying or even engineering jobs (rare for women back then as well) and some lost those positions on this adventure.
Third, women were thought to be temperamentally incompatible and unqualified for such roles. It happens that, up to that time, all medical testing had been done on white males in their forties. The only time doctors saw females (or non-whites, or anyone of any other age group, for that matter) was when they were sick and frail or, for instance, delivering a baby. So there was an underlying but unsubstantiated assumption that women were weak, frail, and delicate. They were also believed to be psychologically fragile in the same sort of ways, prone to fits or distemper without warning. Perhaps this was the stereotype and perhaps some women (and men for that matter) lived into it, but it was an unfair characterization of all women as a class. Some of these women pilots had endured significant hardship in the air, exhibiting skill and endurance that many men (including myself) could not achieve without É cracking up. True enough, Amelia Earhart did not do women any favor by flying off around with world without really knowing navigation or radio (she carried a man with her to do those functions), but thatÕs another story.
So, how did this go at the dawn of the space age?
Before I read this book, I had thought of John Glenn as a forward looking hero for not only allowing but insisting that a woman be allowed on the gantry with his Friendship Seven Mercury spacecraft to paint the logos. She was best qualified and he wanted it done right and he knew the woman personally and didnÕt buy into the stereotypes. But we see in this documentary that even John Glenn would only go so far.
This is a story well told, but more importantly, it is a carefully researched and documented piece on just what happened between a group of extraordinary women and their government.
There were two or three significant leaders among women pilots during this era. The heroin of this story is the incomparable Jerrie Cobb, a woman of remarkable aviation accomplishments before any of this even started. There was a doctor, William Randolph Lovelace of the Lovelace Foundation in Albuquerque, New Mexico who had been intimately involved with the screening of the official male astronauts, the original seven and those following. He made it a personal project to determine clinically if otherwise qualified and experienced women could also make the cut through the same exams.
Trying to do this on the government nickel at Wright Patterson Air Force Base (Dayton, Ohio) he pretty quickly ran into what was essentially, ÒWhy do we need to do this? ItÕs wasteful and inappropriate,Ó from top brass. So he got private funding and did the work on his own back in Albuquerque.
Jerrie Cobb was the lead candidate and her performance on all tests was superlative. To make a very long and thoroughly researched and documented story short, she could be twisted or tumbled or isolated, frozen or baked, examined to excruciating depth, and asked to perform any task while so doing, and come out as clean and level headed as any other human being alive. As well or better than many of the men who had been through the official selections. And she took the whole process cold seriously.
Having been on the Òpowder puffÓ flying circuit, she had connections and knew other women who might be qualified and available. Keep in mind that none of these people were taken care of and transported around as part of their job or at government expense in some top-secret military program. They all came on short notice, making all of their own arrangements, and showing up in high heels and a skirt on mark as requested.
Each of the women discussed in the book, the thirteen women who went through the testing, and some others who were involved but did not for one reason or another, have fascinating individual stories that I cannot go into here. What they did with themselves before, during, and after the ordeal, when the door to space was shut on them permanently, is well worth the time invested in reading this book.
There were a couple of other leaders who must be mentioned, however. One was Jacqueline Cochran, who had been a leader in the WomenÕs Air Corps (WAC) in World War II and was the first and at the time the only woman at the time to have flown a jet. This was a serious obstacle to these women, the fact that they did not have high performance jet experience. Of course, jets were off limits to women for the same sort of reason that space capsules were, mostly stereotyping and notions of apropos. Cochran was from wealth and power, however, and had connections that allowed her to have flown jets privately without government regulations to follow. By the time of Mercury, however, she was too old to be considered seriously. Another woman pilot of influence was Jerri Hart, wife of a U.S. Senator. She and Cobb were the ones to actually testify before Congress in what turned out to be a disappointing circus.
One argument that they attempted, in writing and speaking and otherwise lobbying, to make with NASA, Congress, and anyone who would listen was that, on average, women were in fact less massive than their male counterparts. They would have been easier to fit into space capsules and rocket into orbit. This was a business, even moreso than flying, where every pound counted. But, as John Glenn put it in circus of Congressional testimony, the country just wasnÕt ready for something like that yet.
The ÒMercury ThirteenÓ bet everything on their attempt to get recognition as Americans who could help lead in the space race, and the door was slammed in their face. The last nail was put in the coffin by Vice President Lyndon Johnson himself. ÒLetÕs stop this now,Ó he wrote in a note to an aide, and that was it. And so, the Mercury Thirteen went back and put their lives together in other ways. It was a quarter century before Sally Ride flew in space, and even then she encountered significant and measurable sexism in popular thought (see the Cincinnati Enquirer cartoon). It was 1999 before a woman commanded a space mission. A bittersweet picture towards the end of the middle section of pictures shows about half of the Mercury Thirteen who, now in old age, had gathered by invitation to watch a shuttle launch in 1995.
For those interested in womenÕs causes, this is only one of hundreds or thousands of such stories, women beating their way into menÕs world over the last several decades. My own interest (as a middle-aged white male who is, nonetheless, far from qualified from such work as these aspire to) is in the sociology and politics of the infancy of the move of humankind onto the final frontier. It is sad and unfortunate, but doubtless inevitable, that the road to the stars, already known to be quite rough, had to begin with additional potholes such as those suffered by the Mercury Thirteen.
Post Script.
I learned the next day at work that Wally Schirra had passed away, as I was writing this review. The announcement from the NASA Administrator is attached. This leaves two surviving of the Seven, Senator John Glenn and Scott Carpenter. We do not know the current fortunes of the Thirteen.
Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 11:33:36 -0700
To: "All Personnel" <all.personnel@list.jpl.nasa.gov>
From: Institutional Communications <instcomm@jpl.nasa.gov>
Subject: Message From the Administrator - May 3, 2007
Reply-To: Institutional Communications <instcomm@jpl.nasa.gov>
Point of Contact: David Mould, Office of Public Affairs, 202-358-1898
---------------------------------------------------
The Passing of Wally Schirra
Today is a sad day for NASA and our country, as we mourn the passing
yesterday in California of astronaut Walter "Wally" Schirra. With Wally's
passing, we at NASA note with sorrow the loss of yet another of the pioneers
of human spaceflight. As a Mercury astronaut, Wally was a member of the
first group of astronauts to be selected, often referred to as the "Original
Seven." Wally is remembered in the close circle of the space community as
the pilot who flew a "textbook flight" on his Mercury mission in October
1962.
But Wally's spaceflight career went well beyond Mercury; on his next flight,
in December 1965, he commanded the Gemini 6 mission with Tom Stafford as
pilot. Wally and Tom carried out the first rendezvous in space, flying for
hours in formation with Frank Borman and Jim Lovell in their Gemini 7
spacecraft, and completing one of the key steps along the path to the moon.
The fact that this mission flew at all will always be known as a testimony
to Wally's cool precision under stress, for Gemini 6 experienced the first
on-pad engine shutdown in human spaceflight history. Worse, the crew had a
liftoff indication triggered by a faulty umbilical connection; according to
mission rules, they should have ejected from the spacecraft. But Wally did
not feel what he thought he should have felt had the booster really begun to
take flight, and so the crew stayed aboard, saving the mission and quite
possibly the program.
Wally's last flight was Apollo 7, the first to be conducted in the aftermath
of the disastrous Apollo 1 fire. This flight was another enormous success,
accomplishing "101% of its objectives," according to the post-flight
debrief. It also made Wally the first man to command three different
spacecraft, and the only one to fly Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.
It was impossible to know Wally, even to meet him, without realizing at once
that he was a man who relished the lighter side of life, the puns and jokes
and pranks that can enliven a gathering. But this was a distraction from the
true nature of the man. His record as a pioneering space pilot shows the
real stuff of which he was made. We who have inherited today's space program
will always be in his debt.
Michael Griffin
Administrator