Mercury 13

[airdvr 210]

https://youtu.be/jpiVx2mQhKI

Interesting doc on NetFlix. I had no idea.

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[RonD1120 62]

Another long forgotten NASA program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6xJzAYYrX8

It's a parody, folks.

Look for the shiny things of God revealed by the Holy Spirit. They only last for an instant but it is a Holy Instant. Let your soul absorb them.

[pchapman 279]

I haven't read up too extensively about the so-called Mercury 13 but did know about them from aviation history. My take:

The women were a bunch of wanna-be's with no official sanction or anything, not part of any space program -- who did some medical tests and some of whose leaders did some lobbying.

Although their age & experience varied, they tended to be quite good pilots who had or would go on to achieve quite a bit, given the limitations imposed on them.

If they had been male with the same experience, they wouldn't have gotten into the space program either.

Even in the latter Shuttle or in the ISS era the chances of a someone getting into the space program was exceedingly remote, if they were no more than a well motivated individual with some decently good experience & skills flying smaller aircraft. To get in, you would still better have plenty of military jet experience, or be a very competent PhD researcher in some field. And become one of a very small fraction of those who applied, who got through all the selection process.

The Mercury capsules could largely be ground controlled - heck, chimps did suborbital or orbital flights in those capsules. Nevertheless, experiments and maneuvering could be done by the Mercury pilots, and they monitored and were a vital backup in case of systems failures. (Indeed, that's a part of the role of airline pilots these days given all the systems automation.) So the most highly qualified aviators were selected, whether or not some other humans could have been trained to do an adequate job in most circumstances.

So while it all is a tale of people trying to achieve more, and achieve things in place of institutional and societal barriers that make no sense to us now, sometimes I think too much is made of the Mercury 13, who were not in any way IN any part the Mercury program. The most qualified aviators were test & fighter pilots and they became astronauts, whether or not others had been given a fair shot at working their way up the ranks to that very select group.