Promised the Moon: The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race FROM THE PUBLISHER
Stephanie Nolen heard a story about Jerrie Cobb, and she couldn't let it go: Cobb, a world-record-setting pilot and a woman, was recruited in 1959 to take the astronaut tests. At the time, the United States was losing the space race. The Soviets had larger, more powerful rockets, and engineers at NASA thought women -- smaller and lighter -- might be the answer to their problems. Women were also thought to be more tolerant of isolation and pain. Randy Lovelace, chair of NASA's Life Sciences Committee and the doctor who supervised the selection of NASA's Mercury astronauts, and Donald Flickinger, an air force brigadier general and pioneer in aviation medicine, came up with the plan for a woman-in-space program. They tested Jerrie Cobb, and she excelled on the same battery of tests that her male counterparts took. She endured time in an isolation tank and spun through powerful G-forces. Lovelace recruited additional female pilots for the tests, and twelve performed exceptionally.
Stephanie Nolen tracked down all eleven of the surviving "Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees." From the FLATs, Nolen gets the firsthand story of those exciting early days of the space race. But the thrill was short-lived. The thirteen women who were thought to be prime astronaut material were grounded in 1961 when the woman-in-space program was abruptly and mysteriously cancelled. Until now, the FLATs never knew why. During a time when a woman in space was regarded as "ninety pounds of recreational equipment," in the words of a well-known physicist, it's not surprising to learn that opposition started at the top. Two of the women, Jerrie Cobb and Janey Hart, put up a fight. They were granted a hearing before Congress, but testimony from John Glenn and Scott Carpenter, two of the Mercury 7, and from one of aviation's best-known and beloved women, Jackie Cochran, thwarted their dreams -- and there would be no American women in space for nearly another quarter century.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
In one of those strange coincidences that often occur in publishing, this is the second book this summer (after Martha Ackmann's The Mercury 13) to relate the little known but remarkable story of the 13 women who trained in the early 1960s to be Mercury astronauts, and though a slightly less satisfying effort, this is still compelling reading. These women passed many of the same grueling tests taken by the male Mercury astronauts, but they were opposed by virtually everyone in power at NASA. In addition to bringing many of the 13 to life, Nolen, a foreign correspondent for Canada's Toronto Globe and Mail, does an excellent job of describing the social context in which they operated. She explains that although institutional sexism and a strong antifemale bias among most players at NASA certainly existed, American society at large was not yet ready to permit women to be placed in the roles for which these women were training. Even many women felt this way, and Nolen explains how Jackie Cochran, one of America's best-known female aviators, spoke forcefully against sending women into space. Cochran's motives, according to Nolen, were complex; she didn't want to antagonize powerful male friends, she didn't want other women to overshadow her achievements and she felt that women weren't physically capable of performing such activities. Although Nolen interviewed 11 of the original 13, her material isn't quite as personal as Ackmann's (Forecasts, Apr. 21). Nonetheless, this is impossible to put down and deserves widespread attention. 30 b&w photos. (July 18) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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