The Regretable Cricumsatnce of Mercury 13

while scaning the NASA website, I came to the realization that it took quite a very long time for NASA to get their ass in gear and send a woman in space. The Russians got the first man in space, and the US followed suit in 1961. in 1963 the russians again beat the US(but only because they caught wind that the Americans were thinking of sending women into space, so in order to beat them they sent Valentina Tereshkova into space) but instead of quickly following suit, NASA pulled a huge fail. In 1959 The Mercury 13 were established. Basically William Lovelace, the guy who developed the astronaut testing, wanted to know how women would. So he put the women to the test, adn thirteen of them passed. testing abruptly stopped when the use of a naval facility was denied because NASA hadn't given the okay(and never would for this project until 1978). One of the candidates(actually the first of the group to pass the tests) took it to the higher-ups, but with little success in 1962. unfortunately, george Low, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter all testified that women could not be astronauts, because they needed to be airforce test pilots(and women could not at this time because women were still baned from attending the air force academy. HOwever a few of them were in fact cevillian test pilots) and that they had to have an engineering degree(despite teh fact that John Glenn did not have said Engineering degree while several of the Mercury thirteen did.) So while the testing of the Mercury 13 never promised to send a woman into space, the cancelation of the project certainly hindered the progress. in 1983, Sally Ride would become the first American woman in space(that's right folks, 21 years after Alan Shepard, 20 years after Valentina Tereshkova made her three day trip into orbit) WTF, NASA, why so slow on the uptake?

Now, I'm not saying NASA, bad, soivet union, good job! No, the soviet union doesn't get off so easily either, because while they did get the first woman into space, after they did it they kept training women as cosmonauts but didn't put any of them in space. It should also be mentioned that the Vostok 6(the ship that carried valentina into space) required no piloting from the cosmonaut. basically the kosmonaut just needed parachuting skillz and a pure communist heart. So valentian, 10 years younger than any of the Mercury seven men, logged more space time than any of the american astronauts combined had logged to that date. However, after Valentina, it would be 19 years until the next soviet woman was sent into space(Svetlana Savitskaya, first Soviet woman in space for non-propoganda reasons) Even though there were training programs in place training female Cosmonauts, none were chosen because the few slots for cosmonauts were reserved first for men(and since they had already beaten the americans to the first woman in space, why fill one of those precious spots on a space flight with a woman when a man was willing and waiting?) the soviets get more points than NASA in this subject only because they actually did put a woman in space first, and also beacuse they didn't completely shut down their training program for women cosmonauts. other than that they're no better than NASA. Both fail horribly when it comes to women in space. baiscally it took them 20 years to get over their galactic pissing contest before they decided hey, why not send women(who were WAY qualified) into space to do something useful? In the 50 years since NASA, 61 female astonauts and cosmonauts have made it to space. Only 2 of those women flew before 1983.