Fighting for Space; Two Pilots and Their Historic Battle for Female Spaceflight

xxi, [1], 426 pages. Illustrations. Appendix. Bibliography. Amy Shira Teitel is a Canadian author, popular science writer, spaceflight historian. Teitel's first book was based on research for her master's degree thesis. Breaking the Chains of Gravity (2015) tells the story of America's nascent space program. The book describes the early pioneers of rockets in the late 1920s, up to the formation of NASA. Teitel's 2020 book, Fighting for Space: Two Pilots and Their Historic Battle for Female Spaceflight, is a dual biography of female pilots Jacqueline Cochran and Jerrie Cobb. Geraldyn M. Cobb (March 5, 1931 - March 18, 2019), commonly known as Jerrie Cobb, was an American aviator. She was also part of the Mercury 13, a group of women who underwent physiological screening tests at the same time as the original Mercury Seven astronauts. She was the first to complete each of the tests. Although Cobb successfully completed all three stages of physical and psychological evaluation that were used in choosing the first seven Mercury astronauts, this was not an official NASA program, and she was unable to rally support in Congress for adding women to the astronaut program. As a NASA historian wrote: All the women who participated in the program, known as First Lady Astronaut Trainees, were skilled pilots. Dr. Randy Lovelace, a NASA scientist who had conducted the official Mercury program physicals, administered the tests at his private clinic without official NASA sanction. Cobb passed all the training exercises, ranking in the top 2% of all astronaut candidates of both genders. Jacqueline Cochran (May 11, 1906 - August 9, 1980) was an American pilot and business executive. She pioneered women's aviation as one of the most prominent racing pilots of her generation. She set numerous records and was the first woman to break the sound barrier on 18 May 1953. Cochran was the wartime head of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) (1943-1944) (along with Nancy Love) which employed about 1000 civilian American women in a non-combat role to ferry planes from factories to port cities, and was later a sponsor of the Mercury 13 women astronaut program. In the 1960s, Cochran was a sponsor of the Mercury 13 program, an early effort to test the ability of women to be astronauts. Thirteen women pilots passed the same preliminary tests as the male astronauts of the Mercury program before the program was canceled. It was never a NASA initiative, though it was spearheaded by two members of the NASA Life Sciences Committee, one of whom, William Randolph Lovelace II, was a close friend of Cochran and her husband. Though Cochran initially supported the program, she was later responsible for delaying further phases of testing, and letters from her to members of the Navy and NASA expressing concern over whether the program was to be run properly and in accordance with NASA goals may have significantly contributed to the eventual cancellation of the program. On 17 and 18 July 1962, Representative Victor Anfuso (D-NY) convened public hearings before a special Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics[45] to determine whether or not the exclusion of women from the astronaut program was discriminatory, during which John Glenn and Scott Carpenter testified against admitting women to the astronaut program. Cochran herself argued against bringing women into the space program, saying that time was of the essence, and moving forward as planned was the only way to beat the Soviets in the Space Race. Significantly, the hearings investigated the possibility of gender discrimination a two full years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made that illegal, making these hearings a marker of how ideas about women's rights permeated political discourse even before they were enshrined in law. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated].…