Key Figures

Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran (1906-1980), pilot and first woman to break the sound barrier

W. Randolph Lovelace II (1907-1965), chairperson of the Special Committee for Life Sciences for Project Mercury

Geraldyn “Jerrie” M. Cobb (1931-2019), pilot who set world records in aviation for speed, distance, and absolute altitude

Jane Hart, member of the Mercury 13

John H. Glenn, Jr. (1921-2016), U.S. astronaut

M. Scott Carpenter (1925-2013), U.S. astronaut

Valentina Tereshkova (b. 1937), Vostok 6 pilot and first woman in space

Sally K. Ride (1951-2012), first American woman in space

Tuân Pham, Vietnamese citizen who was the first Asian to fly into space

Arnaldo Tamayo-Mendez, first space traveler of African descent

Guion S. Bluford, Jr. (b. 1942), first African American astronaut

S. Christa McAuliffe (1948-1986), schoolteacher and first American “citizen in space”

Eileen M. Collins (b. 1956), first American woman to command a space shuttle mission, first woman to pilot the shuttle, and first woman to pilot it twice

Liwei Yang, first Chinese national and first person to fly in a spacecraft launched by a country other than the United States or Russia

Summary of the Issue

Before the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created on October 1, 1958, the Air Force was looking to the heavens as an out-post for its eyes in the sky. To that end, it formed the Man-in-Space Task Force and developed a four-phase program to get its crews into space and onto the Moon before anyone else. The first of these programs was called Man-in-Space-Soonest or, in an ironic quirk of acronyms, MISS. If all went according to plan, MISS would put a “man” into orbit by October, 1960.

At the level of government, such “best laid plans” are often changed by congressional committees. As funds for the new civilian space organization began pouring into NASA’s coffers, the funding for the MISS project began to diminish. Eventually, MISS was canceled in favor of NASA’s own “manned” space program.

Once NASA’s plans to put a human into orbit began to gel, the decision as to who would pilot, or occupy, the spacecraft had to be made. Only males between twenty-five and forty years of age would be considered. These men would have to be willing to accept hazards comparable to flying a research aircraft. Parachutists, acrobats, deep-sea divers, and mountain climbers were high on the list of desirable candidates. In an effort to weed out undesirables, NASA required each applicant to be recommended by a responsible organization. Eventually, these criteria were discarded and the search went out to find suitable military personnel with experience as test pilots of jet aircraft. Although race was not mentioned in the specifications, this was the late 1950’s, when racism reigned, making it unlikely that NASA would find someone other than a white male to fill all of the requirements.

Shortly after NASA selected the first astronauts in 1959, Dr. W. Randolph Lovelace II, chairperson of the Special Committee for Life Sciences for Project Mercury, met with Jacqueline (“Jackie”) Cochran, an experienced and well-known pilot. In 1953, Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier. She held more than two hundred flying records. She wanted to fly into space but conceded that she was too old to qualify. Together she and Lovelace decided to test women for the Astronaut Corps. Women were usually smaller and more flexible than their male counterparts, and it was expected that these “astronettes” (a name coined by NASA) would have an easier time fitting into the cramped spacecraft. In addition, Lovelace understood from previous psychological and medical assessments that women could withstand pain, heat and cold, monotony, and loneliness better than men. They contacted twenty-nine year-old Jerrie Cobb, who had set world records in aviation for speed, distance, and absolute altitude, to see if she would be interested in testing for the astronaut program. She agreed and successfully completed all phases of the testing, including a two-week series of tests at the U.S. Navy School of Aviation Medicine in Pensacola, Florida. Afterward, Lovelace asked Cobb for the names of twenty-five other women aviators for possible further testing.

Cochran, a wealthy woman, decided that she and her husband would underwrite the expenses for the selected women. The candidates jumped at the opportunity, and twelve successfully completed the first phase of testing. However, before all phases could be completed, the program was canceled. No one at NASA and no one else connected to the testing has ever publicly explained the reason for the sudden cancellation.

In 1962, Cobb and Jane Hart, a fellow member of the Mercury 13 (as Cobb and the twelve other women had come to be known), lobbied Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to have Congress review the situation. He agreed, and in July, 1962, the two women testified before the House of Representatives’ Space Committee, claiming that NASA had discriminated against women by canceling the program. Two Mercury astronauts, John H. Glenn, Jr., and M. Scott Carpenter, also testified before the committee. They stated that they did not believe there was discrimination in the selection process and that, according to Glenn, “The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.” Cochran then testified at the hearing that both NASA and the military would lose money if they trained women, who would never finish the program because “marriage is the basic objective of all women.” She also testified that she did not believe that NASA had discriminated against the women during the testing and selection process. As a result, Congress decided not to force NASA to open the astronaut program to those who were not test pilots.

Project Mercury, America’s first small steps into the universe beyond Earth, provided the necessary thrills to encourage President John F. Kennedy to set more heroic goals. As a means to upstage the Soviet Union’s cosmonauts, flying in their Vostok spacecraft, Kennedy proposed to send a “man” to the Moon.

Project Gemini, with its two-seat spacecraft, followed Mercury. Bigger crews and an increased number of flights required more astronauts to fill the seats. The “Original Seven” Mercury astronauts could not fly all of the missions. In addition, one of the astronauts, Donald K. “Deke” Slayton, was grounded with a heart murmur; another, M. Scott Carpenter, was not in good standing with NASA because of his apparent distractions during his orbital flight; and Glenn was considered a national treasure whose life could not be risked. The “Second Nine” astronauts, including Neil A. Armstrong, were selected in October, 1962. The following October, fourteen men were added to the roster of astronauts. By 1965, it was clear that the Apollo lunar-landing program would need scientists aboard the lander to conduct geological research. At long last, the ranks of the astronauts would include five non-pilots. It would still, however, lack women and people of color. Nineteen more pilot astronauts joined the Corps in April, 1966. Eleven scientist-astronauts were chosen the following July. The last group of astronauts, chosen before the close of the Apollo Program, were former pilots of the canceled Manned Orbiting Laboratory program. During the first eighteen years of the American space program, seventy-three white, male astronauts were chosen. That was about to change.

With the advent of the Space Transportation System and the role of the space shuttle in scientific research, a new breed of astronaut was born. Unlike its predecessors, the shuttle did not accelerate rapidly to free itself from the bonds of gravity. Living quarters were roomier and included such amenities as a kitchen and a “restroom.” The bone-rattling water landing was replaced with a gentle glide landing equivalent to that of a commercial jetliner.

In January, 1978, thirty-five astronaut-candidates were selected. They included scientists as well as pilots. They also included women and nonwhite males: Guion S. Bluford, Jr., Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Sally K. Ride, and Kathryn D. Sullivan.

Contributions

Who is best qualified to fly into space? What does it take to acquire the “right stuff”? Since the beginning of the Space Age, these questions have been posed both by those who wanted to fly in space and by those who were going to catapult them into orbit.

In the era before the shuttle, when scientific studies were inadequate to answer the questions, researchers and decision makers had to base their decisions on logic. They reasoned that they were placing the astronauts on top of a very fast-moving guided missile, loaded with extremely explosive propellants, and were accelerating them very rapidly to escape the pull of gravity. Inside their tiny, pressurized spacecraft, the astronauts were protected from the unsurvivable environment of space by thin sheets of metal and multilayered space suits. Hurtling around the globe at speeds of 8 kilometers per second would require lightning-fast reflexes. If the guidance and control systems failed, an astronaut might be subjected to high-speed rotational motion along any of the spacecraft’s axes.

As a result, the qualifications of the earliest astronauts were based on these known conditions of the spacecraft and early space travel: The candidate had to be less than forty years of age; NASA did not want someone growing old while the rocket scientists were perfecting the launch vehicle, spacecraft, and other essential hardware. The candidate had to be less than 5 feet, 11 inches tall and in excellent physical condition. Anyone taller than that would be unable to fit inside the tiny spacecraft. The “excellent physical condition” part eliminated those who might have a weight problem or a physical disability. An astronaut had to have a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, although there was no specification for the area of the degree; the educational level, as an indicator of intelligence and learning ability, was what was important. Many thousands of candidates met these requirements, regardless of race or gender.

Each candidate had to be a graduate of a test-pilot school. The astronaut would be flying in a high-performance spacecraft, and at that time it had not yet been determined whether the astronaut would actually pilot the spacecraft. Eligible pilots were required to have accumulated 1,500 hours of flying time and to be qualified as jet pilots. These requirements narrowed the field quite a bit, but it still could include nonwhite and female candidates.

After considering the many possibilities, NASA scientists concluded that seeking candidates among military jet test pilots would be the answer. Jet pilots, it was reasoned, handle very fast-moving aircraft on a daily basis. Test pilots have a great deal of experience handling emergency situations in these fast-moving aircraft. Military test pilots face deadly encounters on a regular basis. Based on all of these criteria, the only candidates remaining, at that time, were white males.

Context

While America was publicly demonstrating its prowess in space exploration, the Soviets were secretly trying to upstage them in any way they could. Having already beat the United States to orbit with Sputnik in October of 1957, and with a living creature (the dog Laika) the following May, the Soviets wanted to beat the Americans to orbit with a human passenger, too. This they accomplished on April 12, 1961, a scant twenty-three days before Alan Shepard climbed into the heavens aboard Freedom 7.

The Soviet Union had bigger boosters, and that gave them the advantage when it came to space firsts. They placed a human, Yuri A. Gagarin, in orbit ten months ahead of John H. Glenn, Jr. A cosmonaut, Gherman Titov, spent a full day in space twenty-one months before Gordon Cooper. They accomplished the first piloted orbital rendezvous mission between two spacecraft three and a half years before Gemini VI-A met Gemini VII in December, 1965. On June 16, 1963, the Soviets launched the first woman into space. Valentina Tereshkova piloted the Vostok 6 spacecraft for three days and amassed more flight time than all of the Mercury astronauts combined. She was not a military test pilot; she was not even a pilot. She was a textile worker and an amateur parachutist. She was also the fiancée of cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev, who piloted Vostok 3 the previous year. It would be nineteen years before the next woman would fly into space. She was Svetlana Savitskaya, a Soviet test pilot with more than 1,500 hours of flight time in a variety of aircraft. She was the first woman to spend time on a space station. Her flight, like that of her predecessor nearly two decades earlier, served propaganda purposes and came only seven months before the first American woman flew into space. The following year, she returned to space as the first woman to make two spaceflights and the first to perform a spacewalk.

On June 16, 1983, twenty years to the day after Tereshkova’s flight, Sally K. Ride became the first American woman in space. The thirty-two-year-old physicist proved, at last, that American women were perfectly capable of surviving a trip into space and performing tasks similar to those performed by their male counterparts. She returned to space the following October, along with Kathryn D. Sullivan, on the first flight to feature two women. Sullivan became the first American woman to perform a spacewalk during the flight aboard Challenger.

The first Asian to fly into space was Tuân Pham of Vietnam, a former Vietnamese Air Force pilot. He was part of the sixth international crew flown by the Soviet Union. His Soyuz 37 flight took him for a three-month stay aboard the Salyut 6 space station in July, 1980. The first space traveler of African descent flew on the next Intercosmos mission, Soyuz 38, in September, 1980. Cuban-born Arnaldo Tamayo-Mendez was also a military pilot.

The first African American astronaut was Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford, Jr., of the U.S. Air Force. He was one of the mission specialists on STS-8, the first night launch in the shuttle program. The six-day scientific mission began with the launch of Challenger on August 30, 1983. Two flights later, the STS 41-B mission featured the first untethered spacewalk in history and included in the crew Ronald E. McNair, the second African American astronaut.

The first classified flight in the history of the American space program was STS 51-C in January, 1985. The all-military, five-person crew included the first Asian-American, Air Force major Ellison S. Onizuka. The U.S. space program, now integrated, was proceeding at a steady pace toward the day when an ordinary citizen, a non-governmental employee, would fly into space.

On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger was launched on its tenth and final flight. On board was the most integrated flight crew to date. It included three white male crew members, Commander Francis R. “Dick” Scobee, Pilot Michael J. Smith, and Payload Specialist Greg Jarvis. Ellison S. Onizuka joined Judith A. Resnik, the second woman in space, and Ronald E. McNair, the second African American in space, as mission specialists. The crew was rounded out by the first “citizen in space,” schoolteacher S. Christa McAuliffe. For the first time in the history of the American space program, men and women—black, white, and Asian— were equal in space. Seventy-three seconds into the launch of STS 51-L, the vehicle experienced a structural breakup, taking it and its seven-person crew to a watery grave. For the first time in the history of the American space program, a crew was lost during flight.

In March, 1998, NASA announced that Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Eileen M. Collins would become the first American woman to command a space shuttle mission. She had already flown as the pilot on two previous missions, becoming the first woman to pilot the shuttle and the first woman to pilot it twice. The STS-93 launch of Columbia to deploy the Chandra X-Ray Observatory took place on July 23, 1999, forty years after W. Randolph Lovelace II had approached Jerrie Cobb to test for his astronette program. The flight was the ninety-fifth in the space shuttle program and the 126th flight piloted by Americans. It took place only thirty-six years after the Soviets sent Valentina Tereshkova into orbit as the pilot of Vostok 6.

In September, 1998, sixty-seven-year-old Jerrie Cobb was honored at the grand reopening of the Pioneer Woman Museum in Ponca City, Oklahoma. The event took place shortly before seventy-seven-year-old John H. Glenn, Jr., made his second trip into orbit. Oklahoma senator James Inhofe addressed the crowd and read a statement from NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin that said, in part:

Cobb was never given that purported opportunity to fly on the shuttle, and passed away at the age of 88 still desiring a chance to go to space.

The first Chinese national and the first person to fly in a spacecraft launched by a country other than the United States or Russia was Liwei Yang, who rocketed into space on October 15, 2003. His spacecraft, Shenzhou 5, was placed into a 200-by- 343-kilometer orbit by China’s Chang Zheng 2F booster. He spent nearly a day in orbit, completing 14 revolutions of Earth.

See also: Cooperation in Space: U.S. and Russian; Gemini Program; Mercury Project; Space Shuttle Flights, 1983; Space Shuttle Flights, 1984; Space Shuttle Flights, July-December, 1985; Space Shuttle Mission STS-63; Space Shuttle Mission STS-95; Space Shuttle Flights, 1999; Space Shuttle Mission STS-93.

Further Reading