Each of the women tried to clear her schedule as the date for the Pensacola testing kept changing. On July 8, ten days before they were due to arrive in Florida, they each got another letter from Randy saying the Pensacola tests had been moved from July 18 to September 18. They had two months to rearrange their lives yet again, this time to arrive on September 17 for a two-week stay at the US Navy School of Aviation Medicine. “There is to be no publicity whatsoever about these tests or your trip to Pensacola,” he wrote. “Any and all news releases will be made only after testing is completed and then only with the permission of the US Navy and the girls participating in the program.”
He followed up with a second letter four days later. As with their New Mexico testing, Jackie would be covering transportation and lodging fees for any candidate who needed financial help, so they were asked to please let the clinic know, as it would be coordinating the aid. “As Miss Cochran will be in Pensacola for a few days during the tests, you can thank her in person,” Randy told them. He then suggested that, like the male astronauts, the women consider acting as a group in matters of publicity. He expected things to get interesting after this next phase of testing.
Floyd, meanwhile, kept a close eye on the financial side, both as benefactor and as chairman of the Lovelace Foundation’s board of directors. The cost per candidate had nearly doubled from $70022 per girl to $1,200.23 Looking through the financial statements, he noticed that “the Cobb woman” had donated $300.24 He didn’t know whether she was covering her own testing or covering some added cost since the testing had been expanded. All he knew was the Cochran-Odlum Foundation wasn’t paying for her, so he didn’t know where her funding came from or what her intention was with a donation.
Jackie wrote to the girls the same day as Randy. After urging them to take the Pensacola tests seriously, she reminded them that “the medical checks at Albuquerque and the further tests to be made at Pensacola are purely experimental and in the nature of research, fostered by some doctors and their associates interested in aerospace medicine…you were under no commitment to carry forward as a result of successfully passing your test at Albuquerque and you will be under no commitment as to the future if you pass the tests at Pensacola. But I think a properly organized astronaut program for women would be a fine thing. I would like to help see it come about.” But, she said, things were different now than during the war. Women pilots had flown as WASPs because of a manpower shortage. There was no manpower shortage in space, but it was nevertheless important, she assured them, to start gathering data about women astronauts in anticipation of the day when their sex would orbit the Earth. Jackie ended her letter with a recommendation that the girls refrain from any individual publicity. The interests of the group, she said, would be better served with the girls presenting a united front to the media.
The postscript alerted each woman that the same letter was being sent to everyone who had received an invitation to test in Pensacola. The postscript on the letter Jackie sent to Jerrie was more explicit: “Dear Miss Cobb: This letter in precisely the same form is being sent to each of the approximately dozen women involved.”
Jerrie wasn’t the only pilot whose media presence frustrated Jackie. Marion Dietrich, she learned, had sold a story to McCall’s magazine about her Lovelace testing that would be published in the September issue, exactly when the girls would be at Pensacola. “I sincerely hope this problem gets straightened out,” she told Marion in a separate letter. There was little Marion could do; her piece was already scheduled to be printed.
The Lovelace women made their arrangements. K excitedly dropped Jackie’s name, using her letters to be excused from classes at Mercer University for the week of the tests. Gene Nora wasn’t as lucky. When her boss at the University of Oklahoma flight school refused her request for two weeks off, she quit. Wally replied to the barrage of letters, telling Jackie she would be sure to arrive in Florida in peak physical condition and that she was looking forward to meeting her in person. Sarah thanked her for funding her trip but, sensing she didn’t want to be indebted to Jackie, she never cashed the check.
B, for her part, was thrilled by the prospect of meeting Jackie and threw her support behind the famous aviatrix as the leader of their program. She also touched base with Jerri Sloan; the two had remained friends since their Lovelace testing and talked on the phone rather often, comparing notes and trying to get what they deemed to be a real program off the ground. But Jerri had other things to deal with. With her divorce pending, she ultimately decided that being a mother to her children was most important, especially since there was no promise this testing would lead to anything. She withdrew herself from the Pensacola tests. Now there were eight women planning trips to Florida.
* * *
On July 21, the world watched as Gus Grissom became the second American launched into space. It was another suborbital flight as Al Shepard’s had been, textbook all the way through splashdown. As Gus bobbed in his Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft in the Atlantic Ocean, the hatch opened prematurely. Water rushed in and Gus, recalling his training in simulators like the Dilbert Dunker, freed himself from the flooding spacecraft. The recovery helicopter pilot focused on the spacecraft rather than the astronaut, prioritizing the vehicle that was now too heavy to haul from the ocean. It sank, nearly taking Gus with it as he struggled to stay afloat amid the waves created by the low-flying helicopter’s blades.
Gus was finally recovered, but the mission underscored the true dangers of spaceflight. Everything about the missions was hazardous, even the parts that happened on Earth. It raised questions about NASA’s competence and whether spaceflight was worth the potential cost in human lives.
* * *
Three days later, her freezer full of prepared meals for her family and an additional milk delivery scheduled, Janey Hart arrived at the Bird of Paradise Motel. She’d heard about the tests from her longtime friend B, who had passed her name to the clinic after finishing her own testing. The two pilots had met at a Ninety-Nines meeting years earlier and since had gone on plenty of adventures together from flying to sailing the Caribbean. Her nineteen years’ experience, helicopter license, and service as a captain in the Civil Air Patrol was apparently good enough for the clinic. Her invitation to take the medical tests arrived in short order.
Upon checking into the Bird of Paradise, Janey was struck by how perfectly it fit the image of the no-tell motel. Pushing aside images of what had happened on those bedsheets before her arrival, she focused on the tests she hoped would lead to a real spaceflight program. She was a mother of eight and wife to Senator Philip Hart, whose liberal agenda she supported at every event he attended. She didn’t have time to be a lab rat.
Janey was relieved to find that she wasn’t checking in alone. Gene Nora Stumbough arrived the same day. A faculty member at the University of Oklahoma, she was taking advantage of summer vacation to take the medical exams without taking time off. Both women were thrilled to have a companion, but their schedules weren’t the same. They went their separate ways in the morning and met up every night to compare notes and offer each other support for the next day’s tests.
For her part, Gene Nora didn’t think there was much future in the program beyond that week of testing, but she nevertheless thought it seemed interesting and exciting enough to spend a week seeing what it was all about. She was impressed with the thoroughness of the testing—she hadn’t realized so many parts of the human body could be checked individually—but even when it was done she didn’t feel there was anything more to the program than a bunch of medical tests. Janey, meanwhile, found the whole thing baffling. She couldn’t figure out why cold water had to go in her ear and needles as thick as fire matches stuck into her hands, but she trusted the tests had some deeper significance. Both Janey and Gene Nora found the unwritten test of keeping their spirits up among the hardest, but both ended the week victorious. The total number of female pilots slated to take the tests at Pensacola was now ten.
&nb
sp; * * *
Jim Webb was stuck on the biggest decision for Apollo. Before he could award any contracts to the companies that would build the mission hardware, he had to figure out how Apollo was going to get there.
The first thing he had to consider was the timeline. Jack Kennedy had said before the end of the decade, but NASA management figured that the Soviets would probably aim to do something big like a lunar mission in 1967 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, so that took away two years. The question thus became how to get to the Moon in six years. Which meant that, on some level, the program would never get out of its experimental stage. Every mission leading up to the landing would be a test flight of some sort. The decision to recruit astronauts from the ranks of test pilots suddenly made a lot more sense.
It also made sense to build off everything NASA engineers were working on with the Mercury program; NASA could cut down on research and development time by retaining the same blunt body design and splashdown landing. But it wasn’t as simple as that. It would take two weeks to get to the Moon and back, and the three-man crew—an odd number would prevent a deadlock in decision-making—would need to be able to take off their pressure suits, so the cabin would have to provide a “shirtsleeves” environment. Most importantly, the spacecraft that landed on the Moon would need enough propellant to leave the surface and make the return journey. All this meant the spacecraft had to be significantly heavier than Mercury.
To get that heavy spacecraft off the Earth, NASA would either need a single massive rocket called Nova or it would have to launch the spacecraft in two parts on smaller Saturn rockets, then assemble it in Earth orbit before sending it to the Moon. The so-called mode decision between direct ascent with Nova and Earth-orbit rendezvous with the Saturns amounted to two different approaches to the lunar mission: either a simpler mission with a complicated rocket or a complicated mission with a simpler rocket. Picking the rocket would determine what the mission looked like, and until that decision was made, the agency couldn’t even start preliminary designs on the spacecraft. Nothing could happen until Jim picked a rocket.
Jim approved Earth-orbit rendezvous with direct ascent as a backup method. NASA sent out requests for proposals to industry contractors who realized their spacecraft could become obsolete in a matter of months if Jim changed his mind. Just months into the program and already Apollo was consuming a larger portion of the agency’s overall budget.
* * *
Robert Pirie, the navy’s vice admiral in charge of air operations, wove in and out of cars in a fruitless attempt to escape Washington traffic. Jackie, sitting in the passenger’s seat, recognized it might not be the best time for a meeting, but figured since Robert couldn’t go anywhere, she might as well put their time to good use. As he drove, she aired her concerns about the Pensacola testing.
Jackie told Robert that she was in favor of a woman-in-space program providing it was activated at the proper time and in the proper way, that is, in a way that didn’t interfere with or delay the male astronauts’ training. She also advised that the women be treated as a group, that they take their tests at the same time and under the same conditions without any discrimination or favoritism. She suggested that the navy make it clear to the women that the Pensacola tests didn’t mean there was an official woman astronaut program. Similarly, the navy should be the body to make any public statements, not individual girls whose uncontrolled publicity put the whole program at risk.
As they parted company that afternoon, Jackie worried that Robert’s mind had been too focused on the traffic to have really heard her opinion.
That same day, Jerrie welcomed Rhea Hurrle at the large, three-bedroom home in Oklahoma City she shared with Ivy Coffey.
Jerrie had gotten worried when the Pensacola tests had been delayed yet again, concerned that the program was losing momentum. So she’d taken it upon herself to organize some interim activities. Even though the psychological testing and isolation tank run she’d done the previous year with Dr. Jay Shurley wasn’t part of the official Lovelace evaluation—Jerrie had done this of her own volition—she considered it a worthwhile step in her personal quest for space. And so she thought it might be useful to have some of the other female pilots go through the same tests. With Dr. Shurley on board, Jerrie wrote to the group suggesting they arrange to spend a few days at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Oklahoma City.
It had been much harder to organize these trips. Jackie wasn’t involved in this stage, so there was no financial help. Jerrie certainly couldn’t foot the bill herself, either; all she could do was help ease the women’s financial burden by offering them a place to stay. She’d decorated the spare room with spaceship-themed bedspreads, celestial wallpaper on the ceiling, and maps of the solar system on the walls. Signs proclaiming “Have urge, will orbit” completed the motif.
Rhea Hurrle was the first to spend a night in Jerrie’s space dorm at the end of July. She spent two days going through the psychological tests. Then on Wednesday, while Rhea was in the tank, Wally arrived at Jerrie’s house.
The two women had already met through the air racing circuit and passed the day talking about Pensacola. Jerrie showed Wally what kind of physical tests she should prepare for; they tried to outdo each other in a display of physical fitness doing sit-ups before deciding it was a draw. They also talked about the other women. Both knew some of them already, but sitting together in the kitchen that evening, they both felt a sense of camaraderie they couldn’t get from letters. It felt like a real program. After hours together, the phone finally rang. Rhea was out of the tank, and Jerrie could pick her up in fifteen minutes. She’d spent almost the whole day in isolation with no ill effects.
The next day, Wally began her psychological testing, Rhea returned home to Texas, and Jackie reiterated her thoughts to Robert Pirie in a personal memorandum she sent to his home rather than his office; it was neither an official communication nor something she wanted making rounds in the navy’s offices.
Wally, like Rhea, proved fit enough for the isolation tank and managed to stay inside for hours. At the end of the week, Dr. Shurley concluded that, like Jerrie, both Rhea and Wally showed a remarkable tolerance to extreme monotony and isolation. He couldn’t find any significant liabilities in either woman’s personality and found instead that each possessed exceptional if not unique qualities that he believed could serve well on space missions. But the psychological fitness of women was based on a sample size of only three. None of the other women had the time or means to spend a week taking these non-vital tests.
* * *
Taking Jackie’s worries to heart, Navy Admiral Robert Pirie decided to go to the source on the whole “woman in space” matter. He figured he ought to ask Jim Webb to verify that, yes, NASA was indeed interested in women astronauts before allowing the Lovelace women to test in a government facility. But he found NASA was noncommittal on the issue. For the moment, the agency said, it didn’t have a requirement for any women’s training program or even an investigation into the potential for women to serve as astronauts. It did, however, recognize that it might decide to undertake a similar research program at some point in the future.
The woman-in-space issue was just one among the dozens of NASA-related items crossing Lyndon Johnson’s desk in late summer. He was trying to increase the national focus on education by leveraging the government’s emphasis on space exploration. Scores of letters asked him for details about America’s communications satellite program. There were also letters from the public—kids with suggestions of how to salvage spacecraft after splashdown, people wondering whether the Russians could seize control of a Mercury capsule in orbit. One woman even wrote LBJ to say she had seen electrical currents on the Moon.
Jim, too, had more than enough on his plate figuring out the specifics of Apollo and trying to surpass the Russians without adding women to the mix. On the matter of beating the Russians, it looked like NASA was falling even further behind; on A
ugust 6, 1961, cosmonaut Gherman Titov spent just over twenty-four hours in orbit.
Eleven days after Gherman’s flight, Jean Hixson arrived at the Lovelace Clinic. The Akron schoolteacher, who mercifully had the support of her principal to take time off for her week in Albuquerque, was the lone woman on Lovelace’s list to have served as a WASP; she joined in December 1943 and served until the group’s deactivation. Staying with the Air Force Reserves after the war, she developed a close working relationship with the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where she did some early testing on the effects of zero gravity and broke the sound barrier as a passenger. The supersonic schoolmarm married her love of aviation with her work, developing aviation curricula at the school where she taught, establishing a school planetarium, and organizing field trips to NASA’s Lewis Research Center. She’d given all this background to the Lovelace Clinic but had shaved two years off her birthday; she reported herself as thirty-five rather than nearing thirty-eight. Her age had no bearing on her physical fitness. Jean became the thirteenth female pilot to successfully take the Lovelace medical exams.
Almost immediately, with the Pensacola tests just weeks away, Jean joined the other ten women in making their final arrangements for Florida. Sarah Gorelick knew she was going to have a hard time taking additional leave from her job with AT&T so sought Jerrie’s help. She gave her boss a letter from “NASA consultant Cobb,” but he wouldn’t be swayed. So Sarah quit, and ten days before she was due in Pensacola, coworkers threw her a goodbye party in the Kansas City office, complete with a toy astronaut helmet. The secret of why she was leaving had gotten out among her friends, who were all thrilled for her. K Cagle managed to persuade the dean of Mercer University to allow her husband to register in her stead. Gene Nora Stumbough quit her job as a flight instructor, trusting that if the tests went nowhere, she’d be able to find another flying job. Wally Funk was so passionate about the Pensacola tests and convinced this was her path into space that she rode her bike the eight miles to and from work in preparation for the tests. Rhea Hurrle, Janey Hart, Jean Hixson, Irene Leverton, and Marion and Jan Dietrich all trained with bicycle rides, push-ups, and long hours studying aviation manuals and meteorology.
Fighting for Space Page 27