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The Woman Who Should Have Been the First Female Astronaut
StartsWithABang writes We like to think of the Mercury 7 — the very first group of NASA astronauts — as the "best of the best," having been chosen from a pool of over 500 of the top military test pilots after three rounds of intense physical and mental tests. Yet when women were allowed to take the same tests, one of them clearly distinguished herself, outperforming practically all of the men. If NASA had really believed in merit, Jerrie Cobb would have been the first female in space, even before Valentina Tereshkova, more than 50 years ago. She still deserves to go.
At this point we'd just be paying to put an old woman into space in the name of equality. Someone pin a ribbon on her chest, say a formal apology, and let the space program be used for space research rather than as a political platform. The only reason that this stuff is coming up so much lately is Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, anyway.
cos she has no sperm.
(and no I'm not kidding, they tested your sperm to see if you qualified as part of Project Mercury)
The public weren't prepared to accept female deaths - or at least, politicians didn't think they would.
Women performed better in many tests - particularly stress testing, sensory deprivation, etc.
Consisting of a handful of sentences written in 20 point font that failed to support its facts nor conditional, inflammatory conclusion. It is a troll article, like so many from that site.
The point made may be true, but why should a reader spend more time researching the article's sources than the writer themselves did to find the truth?
Oh, please. Tereshkova was nothing but a political stunt (easily demonstrated by the fact that it took twenty years to get another woman into space). She wasn't even a pilot at all at the time when every astronaut candidate was expected to be an already accomplished test pilot. Cobb has more bragging rights that Tereshkova ever had. The same goes for the "Meanwhile, NASA wouldn’t open its astronaut ranks to women until 1978" sentence. The astronaut ranks in the USSR weren't really much better.
outperforming practically all of the men
It's ambiguous whether this means "practically all of the male candidates" or "practically all of the Mercury 7". The former is obvious, the latter isn't mentioned anywhere in TFA, and judging from the numbers ("the top 2% of all candidates", which counted five hundred), it's far from clear that this was the case.
Ezekiel 23:20
Cobb has more bragging rights that Tereshkova ever had
That could very well be true, except for that one right the article is referring to -- the right to brag about being the first woman in space. That one belongs to Tereshkova and will, at least until facts mean more than rationalizations.
It is a very good thing that slashdot is banned in the Middle East. Traitors here often discuss advanced technology that could be used by the Islamofascists to improve the deadliness of their makeshift terrorist devices.
NASA did NOT test that group of women, and NOT to the same standards as the original astronauts. The ladies in question were sharp, physically fit, and had pilot's licenses BUT that's nearly the extent of their resume' overlap with the Mercury 7. Every few years some self-styled feminist guy or some ladies' magazine or website pretends nobody knows about ms. Cobb and her obviously unfairly overlooked sisters and then treats a generally ignorant public to tails of these superwomen being better than the men NASA chose but being overlooked because the nation was run by a bunch of "male chauvenist pigs". This is a re-writing of history by people who certainly know better but have outed themselves as unreliable sources of unbiased historical facts.
Jerrie and her fellow would-be lady astronauts were on an "equal rights" political campaign. They set out to prove on their own that they should be allowed into the program and had they been a bunch of men with the EXACT SAME records nobody would have given them the time of day. Instead, over the years, they have been embraced as pioneers for women's rights and become celebrity causes. Government officials, always alert to politics and the need to have support from activists, have given them awards and lots of free complements in speeches (but notably NEVER slots on the astronaut corps, nor even guest roles as shuttle payloads like a couple of members of congress - Senator Garn and Senator Nelson should ring some bells...).
NASA required all the original astronauts to have engineering degress and military flight experience in high-preformance jets (particularly choosing test pilots); this was not arbitrary - they wanted people with a PROVEN record of self control, proven affinity for understanding engineering, and a proven ability to remain calm and observant and carry out technical procedures while facing death. Neither Jerrie nor her fallow would-be lady astronauts fit the bill (just as most male aviators in the US also did not fit). Indeed, had the scope of astro candidates been expanded it still would not have included these women because there were plenty of other male miitary test pilots available with far better qualifications. When you have plenty of candidates who fit your requirements already, you do NOT add-in another set of unknowns and another set of hassles (like the need to deal with male AND female sanitary requirements, the need for a wider variety of spacesuit design features, etc) without some really good justifications. NASA accomodated women much later when it was appropriate - in the shuttle era. Had NASA in the late 1950s had a huge pool of qualified female test pilots and no qualified males, they would have gone with women and added men later.
That reminds me of the old joke about the male athlete who planted someone else's urine to clear himself of doping charges. "We have two good news for you; first, you've been cleared of the charges, and second, you're pregnant."
It happened - was a racing cyclist in the 1970's, possibly in the Tour de France. Dope tests were relatively new then and only used in the topmost races.
The "other person" was his wife. The sample was given in front of a doctor, so "planting" someone else's urine would have been very difficult. The story I heard (as told in the "Cycling" newspaper) was that before the test he emptied his bladder behind the bushes and refilled with his wife's urine via a catheter. AFAIR he was not a top rider, just a lowly domestique desparate to stay in contact with the race. He was certainly not cleared of charges.
A fair percentage of early space exploration was entirely political stunts. It was one of the driving forces that made it all happen.
Doesn't mean it wasn't an achievement and Tereshkova has something that no-one can ever take away from her.
"Had NASA believed in randomly allowing people to not meet any qualifications other than the final testing.."
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
....Because none of them had the type of test pilot experience necessary for the Mercury program in the USA or the Vostok program in the Soviet Union..
We forget that at the time of the start of manned flights in 1961, it was an extreme unknown on how well an astronaut would handle a spacecraft in Earth orbit. As such, both the Americans and Russians chose trained test pilots, who had the ability to calmly handle any dangerous situation during a test flight. And in those days, only men met that qualification. It wasn't until the middle 1970's that both the Americans and Russians--based on their spaceflight experience--finally figured out how to choose females to become astronauts/cosmonauts on something besides a publicity stunt.
Snopes isn't so sure. "We haven't yet found a verified news report of a drug testee whose cheating was exposed when urinalysis revealed him to be pregnant. (Pregnancy tests aren't a standard part of the drug screening process.)"
Any psychologist would have field day with Freud.
I don't think that the USSR were making any particular statement about gender politics. They were simply looking to score another 'first'.
There's also a suspicion that their statement was that their space industry was so advanced, that they could send up even a woman. So the exact opposite of a positive gender equality message.