Fighting for Space

by Amy Shira Teitel

  “Well, sir, that is a very difficult question to answer,” Jackie began. “Sure, it is nice to be first, but it is also nice to be sure. I don’t think it would justify having a crash program. It would make the hard years of training these men took look a little silly, even if it succeeded. So, no, I can’t quite say I think there should be.”

  “In other words, we should not try to launch a woman in space merely for propaganda purposes, we must be sure of the safety?” Victor continued.

  “Yes, I believe that with all my heart,” Jackie confirmed. She reiterated her stance that the best thing would be to undertake a large-scale program including women of various ages and levels of experience, perhaps even including women as old as herself. No such program should be done simply for the sake of beating the Soviets.

  James Fulton pushed Jackie to elaborate on this hypothetical program, how many women she wanted tested and whether or not she would seek the same opportunities for women with the air force. He spoke so forcefully that Victor interrupted twice asking him to yield, but Congressman Fulton wasn’t finished defending the Lovelace women’s continued testing. He invoked notable women of history as proof of female strength—Malinche serving as a guide for Cortés, Queen Elizabeth defeating the Spanish Armada, Queen Isabella financing Columbus’s expeditions, and Pocahontas saving John Smith’s life.

  “I think that was done for love, sir,” Jackie answered simply. “Women will do an awful lot for that.”

  “Ladies can be courageous for various reasons in space,” James retorted.

  “I think there is no doubt women can go into space and be as successful as men, but I say I don’t want to see it done in a haphazard manner.” Jackie was unwavering in her conviction on this point. “In 1938,” she recalled, discussing her first Bendix win, “there were fourteen pilots took off. I won the race across the board from the boys. So women can fly as well as men. But we are in a new environment. We are in a new era. Even if we are second in getting a woman into the new environment, it’s better than to take a chance on having women fall flat on their faces.” It was Jackie’s final word on the matter.

  “Thank you very much,” Victor said as he ended the hearing for the day.

  Janey couldn’t say she was shocked by Jackie’s testimony; she’d read her statement and knew how Jackie thought a woman-in-space program should be run. As she left the hearing room with Jerrie, they were met by a swarm of reporters pelting them with questions: Why do you want to compete with the men? Are you married? Aren’t you scared? Janey hung back and watched as Jerrie faced the press yet again.

  * * *

  “The committee will come to order.”

  At ten o’clock the following morning, Victor Anfuso called the subcommittee to order for the second day. “There is no question that the witnesses who appear before us today have demonstrated by their backgrounds as engineering test pilots, and as products of NASA’s astronaut training, that the criteria for choosing space pilots at this point in our national space program were wisely selected.” John Glenn and Scott Carpenter, the only two Americans who had orbited the Earth, sat at the witness table. Janey and Jerrie looked on from the viewing gallery surrounded by people eager for a glimpse of their national heroes. Jerrie couldn’t help but notice that the two star witnesses weren’t scientists, they were jet test pilots, and though she’d never met either of them she couldn’t imagine they would be willing to share their prized status with women. She wished a scientist would testify, but the third man appearing on NASA’s behalf was George Low, director of spacecraft and flight missions in the Office of Manned Space Flight. Jackie wasn’t there at all; she didn’t think sitting through the second day was worth her time when she could just read about it in the official Congressional Record later. After his opening remarks, Victor called on George to testify first.

  “My statement this morning covers the qualifications that we have set in our current program for the selection of astronauts,” he began. The qualifications for astronauts had been determined after lengthy consideration, he explained, adding that there was ample motivation for NASA to make the right decision because the success of America’s manned space program hinged on the capabilities of these astronauts. “In many ways, manned spacecraft can be considered as a next generation of very high performance jet aircraft.” Both jets and spacecraft have a similar number of onboard systems, he explained, as well as life-support, power, and fuel systems, and both fly at significant altitudes and velocities. “Thus, there is a logical reason for selecting jet test pilots,” he explained. “In our manned space flight program, we are in a similar situation as in the early development flights on a new aircraft. Each spacecraft differs slightly from previous ones. Procedures are modified and improved from flight to flight. Test pilots are trained and experienced in just this type of work.” NASA was still learning, and it needed knowledgeable eyes and ears in the spacecraft to give feedback to the engineers.

  “Is the decision to take candidates from civilian employment something new?” Victor asked, referencing the agency’s announcement that it would be taking nonmilitary pilots.

  “This is a new provision,” George said, adding that the need for test flight experience was still part of the basic qualifications.

  “In your experience,” Victor continued, “and from the experience of Mr. Shepard and Mr. Carpenter and Colonel Glenn, and other astronauts, is it necessary that he be a test pilot?”

  “I have tried to answer that, Mr. Chairman, in my statement,” George said. “Perhaps I should let one of the gentlemen with me clarify this.”

  “Colonel Glenn,”—Victor turned to address John—“what do you say? Do you think an astronaut or crewmember necessarily has to be a test pilot?”

  “First,” John began, “let me preface my remarks by one statement. I am not ‘anti’ any particular group. I am just pro space.” He wasn’t leaving anything up for interpretation. “Anything I say is towards the purpose of getting the best qualified people, of whatever sex, color, creed, or anything else they might happen to be.”

  “You are not against women. You are a married man, you have children.” Victor wasn’t asking a question, he was affirming John’s status as an all-American hero.

  John went on to echo George’s sentiment that flying in space was an experimental job that required a certain background of technical skill and understanding, and it was only going to get more complicated and dangerous leading up to the Moon landing. Astronauts wouldn’t be passengers on these missions, they would be an integral part of the machine. They would monitor systems, analyze the spacecraft’s performance in flight, and be ready to take full control with a cool head if something went wrong. “This is not to say that no one else could be trained to do it,” he allowed. “However, the test pilot program is built around people who continually demonstrate the emotional, physical, and mental stability to do this.” Here, spelled out plainly, was the issue that Jerrie kept hoping would go away. Women pilots simply did not have the required years of jet test experience that the men did, experiences John explained were vital to the job.

  Pursuing the question of background experience, Congressman George Miller asked John how long it took to become a test pilot. John hazarded a guess: about two years.

  “I had in mind,” Congressman Miller turned to Victor, “that if we have to take people as astronauts who are not test pilots, and if it then takes two years to train them as test pilots before they can become astronauts, this shortens the span in which they can serve as astronauts.” Maybe, he ventured, it made sense to wait until women could qualify as test pilots before allowing them into the astronaut corps so they could serve a full term.

  “I would like to add one thought.” Scott Carpenter spoke up for the first time. “I believe that there is nothing magic about a test pilot, although they have had the benefit of training and experience. The best reason for selecting test pilots for this job, I believe, is that they have had the opportunity to demonstrate
that they have the capabilities required of the job by reason of the fact that they have been employed in the past in the profession that most nearly approximates spaceflight. Our training as astronauts really began when we began flying.” In this way, he said, NASA was taking advantage of as much as fifteen years of experience with each astronaut.

  Watching from the viewing gallery, Jerrie noted that the hearing was finally getting to the issue of “equivalent experience.”

  Victor turned back to John. “Colonel Glenn, from your experience—by the way, are you an engineer?”

  “Not a graduate engineer, no,” John admitted. “I was taking engineering in college.”

  “You have engineering experience?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Here was the loophole. Jerrie scribbled a quick note and slipped it to Janey. Our group, average flying hours, 4,500. Male astronauts, 2,500. How’s that for jet test equivalent? Janey smiled as they wordlessly agreed that the case for women in space looked like it was in good shape. Neither acknowledged that their flying time was in propeller planes, not jets. Compared to the astronauts’ jet test experience, it was like comparing their daily commute with a Formula One driver in a race.

  “These qualifications that NASA has set out apply to women as well as men, do they not?” Victor addressed this question to George. “I want to get that point clear.” They did, George explained, though no woman had yet met them. Victor pressed on. If civilians could now qualify as astronauts and women could be trained as test pilots, could a woman theoretically be selected as an astronaut? “Miss Cochran, for example, is a test pilot?” he asked.

  “Yes, Miss Cochran is an outstanding example,” George confirmed, adding that he didn’t know another woman with her same outstanding qualifications. But if a woman met the qualifications, NASA would certainly consider her for the astronaut corps. “We are certainly not opposed to anything like that in the future,” George said.

  The future seemed to be where Jerrie, Janey, and the other women pilots belonged.

  “One more point,” George resumed. “The equipment available for training pilots for our flights, the centrifuges, the vacuum chambers, all of this equipment is very loaded up at the present time.”

  “That is the best point you have made,” Victor said, pleased that George had brought it up himself. “In other words, you are not objecting to women, but at the present time, to let them use the things that you are using now for the astronauts would be interfering with that program.”

  “We would be interfering with the current program,” George affirmed.

  At this point, Congressman Joseph Karth returned to the idea of relevant experience as it related to jet flying. “Yesterday two of the witnesses spoke very strongly about this qualification. They felt, quite frankly, that an extensive number of logged hours in actual flight compensated for all of the variables or invariables and the emergencies that one might meet as a test pilot. Therefore the test pilot requirement was not a fair one, because it ruled out too many people who normally get this training if they had logged a great number of flying hours.” Then he turned to Scott. “Commander Carpenter, would you care to remark on that aspect of the testimony that we received yesterday?”

  “I feel that this analogy might be valid,” Scott offered. “A person can’t enter a backstroke swimming race and by swimming twice the distance in a crawl qualify as a backstroker. I believe there is the same difficulty in the type of aviation experience that thirty-five thousand hours provides a civilian pilot and the experience a military test pilot receives.” Thousands of hours as a commercial pilot didn’t equate to hundreds of hours of high-speed test flying.

  “I disagree basically on your approach,” Congressman James Fulton jumped in, again rising to the women’s defense. “I believe that space is not an experiment or adventure. I think it is a new area where everybody will operate. Under those circumstances, when women are paying the taxes here, as much or more than the men, I don’t think they should be kept out of space because of rigid requirements.” He returned to the one point that gave Jerrie hope. “On the basis of the requirements that Mr. Low has stated, obviously Colonel Glenn would have been eliminated. You wouldn’t have passed, because you don’t have an engineering degree, do you?”

  “I have one now. I did not at the time of selection,” John explained.

  “So we can’t look at these methods of selection and requirements as rigid. They must be variable, to get various characteristics. Wouldn’t you agree with that?”

  John had to acknowledge that he had been an exception to the rule, but not without cause. “My background at the time of the original selection, I believe, was gone into,” he explained. “It was felt, with my in-service experience and the schools I had been to, while I did not have the actual hours at college, I had more than the equivalency of an engineering degree.”

  “If a woman, then, through her experience, and her flight experience, can give equivalent capabilities and characteristics for a good astronaut, she should not be rejected because of a requirement which she is unable to fulfill.” James Fulton was not backing down. He urged the subcommittee to see what he thought was NASA’s clear bias against women. “I believe that the United States should adopt a program of the first woman in space. We should set that as a national goal. I think for the world it would be a tremendous step forward,” he finished. “I would hope President Kennedy would state such a program.” He turned to John. “Would you agree?”

  “I think this is a little out of my province, sir.” The room chuckled at John’s deflective answer, but James wasn’t letting up. He asked the question again, this time urging John to answer not as an astronaut but as a taxpaying American.

  “Will the gentleman yield,” Victor called out to cool James’s heated temperament. “I don’t think it’s fair to ask any of the astronauts that question.”

  “I don’t want them to shy away from any question,” James shot back.

  “I think you might ask that question to NASA,” Victor suggested. “I think you should ask Mr. Low.” James did, and George’s reply was evasive.

  “I feel, Mr. Chairman,” George answered, “that you gentlemen of the committee are much better qualified than any of us here to advise us on what the national goal should be.”

  “You would not object to that as a national goal—first woman in space program?” James pressed.

  “I don’t believe, Mr. Fulton, that I am wise enough to state what our national goals should be.”

  “How about Commander Carpenter?” James was determined to get an answer.

  “I think at this time it is definitely an experiment,” Scott replied. “There are so many unknowns and it is important for us to eliminate as many of these unknowns before the flights take place as is possible.”

  “But, you see, doesn’t that lead you into the old question of protecting women?” James asked.

  “No, I believe it is protecting our program,” Scott replied.

  “Against women?” James shot back.

  “No, sir; not against women.”

  “If the gentleman will yield!” Victor tried to nip the argument in the bud, but James refused to give up.

  “Jacqueline Cochran,” James began, “holds more aviation and speed records than any living human being, and everybody admits her qualities as a jet pilot. Secondly, in 1959 there were the Lovelace Foundation tests at Albuquerque, New Mexico; seventy-five physical tests were completed in February 1960 by Miss Jerrie Cobb. Miss Cobb and this twelve-woman group passed these tests. Then Miss Cobb underwent the two-week series of tests at the US Navy School of Aviation Medicine in Pensacola in April 1961, and passed. Then what happened?” He addressed the room at large now. “In May of 1961 Administrator James E. Webb names Miss Cobb a NASA consultant. So she holds a position and says what is to be done but is not allowed to do it.” He was only getting more heated.

  “Now my feeling is this,” James continued. “Since this group of women ha
s passed these tests successfully, NASA should outline a training program that does not interfere with the current programs but will let women participate.” Victor moved to cut him off, but James wouldn’t let him. “If I could finish with this, Mr. Chairman: it is the same old thing cropping up, where men want to protect women and keep them out of the field so that it is kept for men.” Now he turned to John. “When you go to the Moon you would want a scientist or astronomer along. Why wouldn’t a woman be good company on a trip to the Moon?”

  “I’m not looking for company, Mr. Congressman. I am looking for the best qualified person to do the job at hand,” John answered.

  James went back and forth with the NASA representatives, who remained steadfast in their argument that training women would take resources away from astronauts training for Apollo missions, so he made his appeal to his fellow subcommittee members. “I will urge NASA, and I am sure the committee will too,”—he looked at his colleagues on either side of him—“that they carry on some kind of a parallel program, without interfering in your present program, to give these women a chance to someday become test pilots. I think the military test pilots schools should be opened to them. They should be permitted to take those tests.”

  “I would like to add on this physical examination program—the program run out there for some of the women at Albuquerque,” John jumped in. “I think sometimes in the papers and magazines the write-ups on this have been a little misleading,” he offered. “I think the tests mainly are run to see if there is anything wrong with a person physically. It isn’t that it qualifies anybody for anything. It just shows that they are a good healthy person…A real crude analogy might be: We have the Washington Redskins football team. My mother could probably pass the physical exam that they give preseason for the Redskins, but I doubt if she could play too many games for them.”

  “You picked a bad team,” Congresswoman Jessica Weis replied playfully. “Maybe she could.”