The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight [Hardcover]

A little over forty years ago -- when our first astronauts were flying high and America was racing the Soviets for space dominance -- a group of two dozen women signed on to take the same tests and training program as the fabled Mercury 7 (John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, etc). These tests were outlined by Tom Wolfe in THE RIGHT STUFF, and have gone down in historical lore as punishing and exacting, but they are nothing compared to what happened to the women next.

Martha Ackmann's breezy prose and ironic wit are on display here, and she handles the story of these heroic women in an engaging, unbiased way that practically makes the book turn its own pages. I couldn't put it down, and neither will you. Highly recommended.

Most readers won't have heard of The Mercury 13, an unofficial group of stalwart women airplane pilots, all tested for potential to become astronauts by the private Lovelace Foundation at the dawn of the space race. While national focus lasered on Alan Shepherd, John Glenn, and the rest of the famous and flamboyant Mercury 7 astronauts who flew the first orbital missions, Jerrie Cobb and her compatriot lady flyers quietly matched, and sometimes surpassed, the test results of the male heros. Accomplished flyers, and businesswomen, the individuals of this group held many aeronautical records and won many air derbys. Some were graduates of the WAC programs of the Second World War, spearheaded by Jackie Cochran. Ackmann paints vivid portraits of each potential astronaut-candidate, and one can easily like these devoted flyers. (Interestingly, the author focuses heavily on the self-destructive political infighting between Cochran and Cobb for leadership of the women-in-space program.)

It's fascinating to "uncover" this group some forty years later. Who knew? Beyond a few publicity shots that appeared in Life magazine and in hometown papers, the women were hidden, unsanctioned as an official group of any kind, almost a curiosity. Yet, many points raised by Professor Ackmann are provocative: Women weighed less than male counterparts - and would require less rocket fuel; and why was there a requirement of jet-flying experience for astronauts when many animals (female, no less!) were sent aloft in the space capsules.

So where's the argument? Clearly, Ackmann launches this retrospective on the women-in-space efforts with the intention of demonstrating blatant sexism and its negative effects. Viewed through the lens of post-feminism, one clearly sees malfeasance - from President Johnson who nixes any further testing, to a Neanderthal congressman who jokes about the need for women in space for reproductive purposes to colonize planets. Yet, a young and innocent John Glenn just can't see beyond what he and America know as the social norms of the times. In 1963, the nation was a decade away from any kind of equal opportunity awareness, and perhaps two decades away from the emergence of political correctness. Were the male leaders of the space program worried about protecting an existing social order, or just worried about beating the Russians to the moon? Therein, the debate. (Enjoy it - far better for you to argue this with your spouse than waste another hour on Reality TV.)