Fighting for Space

by Amy Shira Teitel

  “Gentlemen,” Walter addressed the audience from the podium, “these are your astronaut volunteers. Take your pictures as you will.” The sound of furious shutter-clicking joined the low babble as press kits were handed out and journalists with afternoon deadlines ran for the telephones against the back wall to call their editors. After a few minutes, administrator T. Keith Glennan took the podium.

  “Today we are introducing to you and to the world these seven men who have been selected to begin training for orbital space flight.” A few people shuffled in their seats. “Which of these men will be first to orbit the Earth, I cannot tell you. He won’t know himself until the day of the flight.” Then came the moment everyone was waiting for. “It is my pleasure to introduce to you, from your right, Malcolm S. Carpenter,”—Scott stood as his name was called—“Leroy G. Cooper,”—Gordo also stood—“John H. Glenn Jr.; Virgil I. Grissom; Walter M. Schirra Jr.; Alan B. Shepard Jr.; and Donald K. Slayton—the nation’s Mercury Astronauts.” The room gave a round of applause as the men regained their seats, shooting sidelong looks at one another as though confirming they were all slightly uncomfortable at being on display. Deke Slayton pulled out a cigarette and started smoking almost for something to do.

  Randy Lovelace took the podium next. He was there because NASA had asked him to run the medical testing phase of the astronaut selection program, trusting him to be both thorough and discreet, and now he was presented to the press as the man who picked the most physically prepared astronauts. “I just hope they never give me a physical examination,” he joked of the thorough nature of his medical examinations. “It has been a rough, long period that they have been through. I can tell you that you pick highly intelligent, highly motivated, and intelligent men, and every one is that type of a person,” he spoke of the astronauts as a group. “I am not worried about their stability, their powers of observation, or their powers to accomplish the task which they are given.” US Air Force physician Don Flickinger echoed Randy’s remarks, adding that the high caliber of men they tested spoke volumes of the military for turning out such remarkable candidates.

  Then the journalists got their chance.

  “I would like to ask Lieutenant Carpenter if his wife has anything to say about this, or his four children?”

  “They are all as enthusiastic about the program as I am.” Scott’s answer was straight and to the point.

  “How about the others?” a voice called out from the crowd. “Same question.” The men went down the line, leaning forward into the microphones to give answers that were as concise as Scott’s. Until it was John’s turn. “I don’t think any of us could really go on with something like this if we didn’t have pretty good backing at home, really,” he began, using “us” as though speaking for the group. “My wife’s attitude towards this has been the same as it has been all along through all my flying. If it is what I want to do, she is behind it, and the kids are too, a hundred percent.”

  When each man was asked to discuss why space was appealing, John waxed poetic as he spoke for the group. “Every one of us would feel guilty I think if we didn’t make the fullest use of our talents in volunteering for something that is as important as this is to our country and the world in general right now.”

  “Could I ask for a show of hands from you seven as to how many are confident that they will come back from outer space?” Another question from the audience. All seven raised their hands—John and Wally Schirra raised both—as the room laughed.

  “Were any civilian test pilots considered, or is this confined to military career pilots, and why?” asked another journalist.

  “The answer to that is that the selection process was limited to military test pilots,” Walter Bonney answered as the voice of NASA. “It was a purely arbitrary decision because we knew that the records on these people were available. We could run them through the machines and very quickly make first-cut selections from an elite group.”

  As the press conference wore on, the media fell in love with John. He was verbose where his colleagues were almost monosyllabic. He gave emotional answers about his motivations, his family’s support, and his Presbyterian faith. He charmed the room describing the medical tests they’d all been subjected to. “If you figure out how many openings there are on a human body, and how far you can go into any one of them,”—he paused for effect—“you answer which one would be the toughest for you!” The whole room laughed as he smiled.

  When it was over, John knew he’d marked himself apart from the group. While his colleagues were the epitome of laid back and cool, just as a test pilot should be, he’d offered up too much information about himself and his family. But he figured there was nothing wrong with a little publicity, especially since flying in space wasn’t a popularity contest.

  * * *

  Four days later, the astronauts were still headline news all across America as Jerrie rolled down the tarmac at Las Vegas’s McCarran Field in her Aero Commander at ten o’clock in the morning. The World Congress of Flight was beginning its second day with her world record attempt. A small crowd had come to the airport to watch her take off while attendees in the convention center could watch on closed-circuit television. She gained speed, and the second she was airborne the timer started. She could only pray this flight would be better than her practice run.

  Barely off the ground, she noticed the needle on her compass seemed to be reversed. Unable to trust it until she got to Reno and had a known checkpoint against which to check it, she had to consider it useless and rely solely on her backup navigation method: a map balanced on her knee.

  As she ascended to her cruising altitude of 10,000 feet, Jerrie noticed the faint smell of gasoline. It took her a second to realize that it wasn’t coming from a leak in the fuel tank but from the canisters she’d brought with her—the lower atmospheric pressure had popped their lids right off, and fumes were filling the cabin. She snapped open her vents to get a flow of fresh, freezing air. It had been ninety degrees on the runway that morning, and she hadn’t thought about the missing heater when she’d left her sweater in the hotel. Faced with the choice between cold hands and deadly gas fumes, she chose cold hands.

  Nearing Reno, Jerrie got her first piece of good news. The compass was working perfectly in reverse, so she could rely on the feather end of the needle to guide her rather than the point. Pleased with this stroke of luck, she reached for the Very pistol, slid the nozzle into the tube next to her seat, and fired the flare. The gun fired, but the flare got stuck in the tube. A quarter of the way through a world record attempt and she was flying an aircraft full of gas fumes with a lit flare sticking out the bottom of it. Well, she thought to herself, if God wants me to die in a fiery explosion today, then that’s His plan. She put the mounting danger from her mind and turned toward San Francisco. Then her radio died, cutting her off from the ground. Without it, she couldn’t verbally confirm the official timers at her checkpoints had seen her. She had to hope someone in San Francisco had figured out what was going on and warned San Diego she’d be coming in silent. She turned south and soon met low clouds so dense they formed an almost solid ceiling. She had no choice but to descend low over San Diego so officials could see the “COBB” painted on her underside, though it would cost her precious time. Frustrated, she dipped below the clouds as long as she dared then darted back up to her cruising altitude as she turned toward Las Vegas.

  On the final leg of the most stressful flight of her career, a new problem arose: she was running out of gas. Luckily, she was prepared with her extra canisters, but without an autopilot system, she had to get creative. Jerrie got the plane flying straight and level, then clambered out of her seat to grab a gas canister and pour it into the fuel tank. The moment it was empty, she scrambled her way back to her seat, adjusted the plane’s heading, gulped some fresh air, then maneuvered her way back to do it all over again. She repeated this dance ten times to give her engines every possible extra drop of gas. With just fifty miles to
go, she pushed the plane as hard as she could. Finally, McCarran Field came into view, and to her horror, she saw the judges walking away from the finish line. She tried to squeeze a last little bit of speed out of the Commander, willing the sound of the engine to call the judges back to their station, and mercifully saw them stop and rush back to the finish line in time to log the moment her wheels passed over it.

  Jerrie landed exhausted but tense. Her flight was done, but the judges still had to verify her time. Minutes passed as the Las Vegas team called each checkpoint, and the longer they waited, the more the Aero team felt her chances slipping away. Then, after twenty minutes that felt like two hours, Charles Logsdon gave Jerrie the verdict.

  “You made it,” he told her. She’d beaten the Russian record by just twenty-six seconds, making it the closest record he’d ever measured, but it was enough for the win. Tom Harris and the Aero Design team were ecstatic. Jerrie was, too, and hoped that she might parlay this success into a job with Aero Design, but for the moment she focused on celebrating. The small team took Jerrie out for a private celebratory night with steak and baked Alaska on the Las Vegas Strip away from the World Congress of Flight.

  * * *

  Five months later, Jerrie had settled into her new job as Aero Design’s sales pilot, making demonstration flights to help the company sell airplanes. She was enjoying her new flying life when her old flying life came back.

  In early September, she heard that Jack Ford, her old love from her Fleetway days, was dead; he and his navigator–radio operator were both killed in an explosion shortly after taking off from Wake Island on a ferrying mission to Tokyo. The obituaries Jerrie read felt cold and impersonal. Jack was described as a capable “goodwill aviation ambassador” and a “completely dedicated pilot.” It had been years since she and Jack had spoken, but Jerrie felt the loss deeply. She also felt she could have added so much more to the stories of his death, preserving the legacy of the man she’d loved.

  But Jack was her past. Walking along a nearly deserted stretch of beach in Miami at seven o’clock in the morning with Tom Harris, Jerrie was focused on the future. She and Tom were in town for an Air Force Association Conference, and the pair was taking advantage of the quiet morning to plan for the afternoon’s events. As they walked along the surf, two men emerged from the water and, recognizing Tom, waved and walked over.

  “Dr. Lovelace, General Flickinger,” Tom made the necessary introductions, “I’d like you to meet Miss Jerrie Cobb.” Turning to Jerrie, he added, “These gentlemen just flew in last night from Moscow. They were at a meeting of space scientists.”

  Jerrie looked on as the men caught up about their respective projects. When the conversation turned to Russian aeronautics, Jerrie jumped in with a minor comment about the problems one Russian plane was known to cause its pilots. The doctors turned to her, their interests piqued.

  “Are you a pilot?”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve been flying for sixteen years,” Jerrie began but soon grew shy at the looks of disbelief on the men’s faces.

  “Jerrie has more than seven thousand hours in her pilot log,” Tom jumped in, making sure she didn’t sell herself short. “She’s set three speed and altitude records for us besides.”

  “Have you really, Miss Cobb?” Don was amazed. Right there on the beach, he told her that they’d been interested in the effects of flying on women for a long time and had even designed a pressure suit for Jacqueline Auriol to wear on a recent speed record attempt to steal the crown back from Jackie Cochran.

  “You’d better make one of those pressure suits for Jerrie.” Tom laughed. “She’s liable to try for a record in space next.”

  A heavy pause hung in the air before Randy broke the silence. “Matter of fact, we had indications at the Moscow meeting that the Russians plan to put women on space flights.” A chill ran down Jerrie’s spine despite the warm morning air. “Look,” Randy continued, “let’s get together later and talk some more.”

  That evening, Jerrie met with Randy and Don in one of the Fontainebleau Hotel’s elaborately decorated meeting rooms. They asked her pointed questions about her flying peers, their ages, physical fitness levels, and whether they were typically licensed the same as men. Then they got to the real reason for the meeting.

  “Are you familiar with the Mercury astronaut tests given to select the first seven space pilots at the Lovelace Foundation in Albuquerque?”

  Of course she knew about the astronauts; it was impossible not to see them in newspapers and magazines. LIFE magazine even had an exclusive contract with the men so their stories appeared under their own bylines regularly. And if Jerrie was being honest with herself, she’d been wondering why there were no women pilots in their number, but she didn’t ask that question. Instead, she simply responded with, “I’ve read about them, yes.”

  Slowly, the conversation revealed the doctors’ motivation. After running the medical testing program that had helped select the Mercury astronauts, Randy knew better than anyone what kind of person was physically fit for the rigors of spaceflight. He also knew that women were smaller, lighter, and consumed fewer resources, all of which made them potentially better medically suited to spaceflight. His own curiosity was driving him to find out whether women were as physically and psychologically resilient as the Mercury candidates had proved to be. There was nothing stipulating that he test women pilots; really, he could test any women. But pilots promised a similar baseline as the Mercury astronauts, and having a group of medically cleared female pilots, he thought, could be an asset to NASA should it broaden its astronaut corps. But for the moment this was purely a pet interest for him, albeit one he knew could yield significant results. Though Jerrie had no jet flying experience, she was close in age to the men he’d tested and had ample flying experience. He thought she might be just the woman he needed.

  “What can I do?” she asked. “How can I help?”

  “Would you be willing to be a test subject for the first research on women astronauts?”

  It was as though Jerrie’s whole flying life flashed before her eyes. She vividly recalled the thrill of that first plane ride with her father all those years ago, the glorious freedom that came from flying alone for the first time, the adventures it had brought her. More than anything, she remembered her altitude record flight and the incomparable, mysterious beauty of the blackness of space dotted by bright stars. And now it sounded like they were asking if she wanted to take the first step to make that journey. It was all she could do to keep tears from spilling down her face.

  “I would,” she said.

  Jerrie returned to Oklahoma City and the routine of her job with Aero Design after the conference with the unshakable feeling that something momentous was waiting for her just over the horizon. Every day she checked the mail hoping for a letter saying her flying and medical background was sound and she was cleared to begin the testing, and every day she was disappointed to find nothing from Randy.

  In the meantime, she stayed in touch with Don. Together, they pored over the records of women pilots whose background information was available and who could eventually fill out the ranks of the female medical testing program. What neither knew was what that program would look like. Don had hoped the Air Force’s Air Research and Development Command might pick up the project, but the service had moved away from the idea of testing women for fear of negative publicity. NASA, of course, was just getting started training its seven men. For the moment, it looked like Randy Lovelace would be the lone physician gathering data on how women might perform as astronauts as part of his own private program.

  * * *

  On the front page of the October 27, 1959, edition of the New York Times, above the fold, Americans got their first look at the far side of the Moon. The grainy, annotated image looked more like a vaguely spherical amorphous blob than Earth’s natural satellite, but the implications were significant. Taken by the Soviet Luna 3 satellite, the image demonstrated that Soviet technology was
sophisticated enough to remotely aim its cameras and time its shutter to perfectly capture something never seen by human eyes. America was falling further behind.

  The overall feeling in Washington remained one of wariness. The Soviets were still outpacing American technology, and there was some speculation that Premier Nikita Khrushchev would propose a cooperative mission in space that would turn out to be some kind of booby trap. Whatever the case, it was clear that space would be a major issue in the 1960 election, which meant Lyndon Johnson was in a prime position. He was still considered “Mr. Space,” still the go-to senator for a comment on the Soviets’ every move.

  At Jackie’s urging, and to keep the record straight on America’s legacy in aviation on the cusp of the space age, he had Congress declare December 17, 1959, “Wright Brothers Day”; no one, he least of all, wanted to see the Russians referring to the Wrightske brothers. When the date came, Lyndon gave a speech at the Wright Memorial Dinner in Washington as Jackie watched from the audience. “Are we in a competitive space race with the Russians? An unqualified yes!” He restated the position laid out in the National Aeronautics and Space Act and reiterated America’s need to act if it was going to be an international leader in space. The one thing Lyndon remained mum about as the year drew to a close was his seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

  “Lyndon would make the ablest president of any of us running, but he can’t be elected.” The sentiment of Senator John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts was the same as the Democratic Party’s. LBJ’s detractors maintained that he was too closely connected with the south to appeal to northern liberal voters, and Lyndon worried that as soon as he declared himself a candidate, he would be the front-runner and then by default the target of a “stop Johnson” campaign. And if he was honest with himself, he knew it would be successful. The charisma, charm, and political rhetoric that he was so adept at in small meetings didn’t always come across in front of large crowds, particularly when those crowds were part of televised events. He couldn’t compete with the likes of Jack Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in a beauty contest. No, Lyndon thought his best bet was to stay quiet. Let the other candidates declare themselves then tear each other apart in the preliminary debates. Then the party would have no choice but to come to him at the last minute before the convention.