Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America's First Women in Space Program, Margaret A. Weitkamp
Margaret Weitekamp traces the rise and fall of the Lovelace Woman in Space program within the context of the cold war and the thriving women's aviation culture of the 1950s, showing how the Lovelace trainees challenged prevailing attitudes about women's roles and capabilities. In examining the experiences of the would-be Lady Astronauts, this study documents the achievements and frustrated hopes of a remarkable group of women.
Margaret A. Weitekamp recovers the story of a little-known, ultimately unsuccessful, initiative to select American women to participate in the early astronaut training program. The program was largely the result of the efforts of two aviation pioneer/entrepreneurs: Jackie Cochran, a wealthy (through marriage) woman aviator/entrepreneur, and Dr. William Randall Lovelace II, a prominent physician involved in aerospace medicine. The two were largely responsible for initiating and conducting a series of physical and psychological tests on a small group of female aviators to determine their suitability for space flight. Because women are on average lighter, and consume less food and oxygen, there were sound engineering reasons to employ them as astronauts in the early orbital program. Predictably, although female pilots were identified who passed the same battery of tests given to the Mercury astronauts, they were treated with condescension by the press, and as a potential public relations disaster by NASA.
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004, 232 Seiten, ISBN 978-0801879944