Right Stuff, Wrong Sex

Recently, I finished reading Right Stuff, Wrong Sex by Margaret Weitekamp. With the subtitle of ‘America’s First Women in Space Program,’ I initially thought that the text would center around the women who were tested as potential astronauts. However, this book proved to discuss the background and development of Dr. William Randolph "Randy" Lovelace’s Women in Space testing program, the political backlash against the program, and the general cultural beliefs that stopped women from being a part of the Mercury and Apollo programs. *Lovelace’s facility in Albuquerque became NASA’s medical center, mainly because he was a leader in aviation medicine and working on developing a space medicine research program.

Remember that the early space program began before the women’s lib movement, so any consideration of a female for an astronaut could be assumed to be tricky. What was surprising to learn was how under-the-table Lovelace’s program had to operate because of the hostility he faced in the political sphere. I was shocked to find out that President Johnson (Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX is named after him) was very much against female astronauts. A scribbled note from him in response to an inquiry about female candidates from NASA’s Administrator is one of the only bits of a paper trail recording the hostility of those in Washington against the women. Instead of his name, he signed 'Let's end this now!' in the space at the end of his note.  

Overall, 25 female pilots were tested by Lovelace and 13 passed the week-long physical examination. Only three women were able to go on to further testing, the not-so-official program was ‘officially’ cancelled only 5 days before the rest of the women were scheduled to fly to Pensacola, FL for psychological testing. This was actually a most interesting test of how potential astronauts handled total isolation: they floated in a pool, in a darkened room for as long as the possibly could. Both the air and the water temperature were matched exactly to the women’s body temperature, so apparently they didn’t even feel the water when they splashed it!

I found myself frequently frustrated with the lack of support for the women. The cultural standards and expectations for women could be used against them – one women was in a congressional hearing testifying for female astronaut candidates, was photographed with her heels off under the table and that breech in expected etiquette was used to discredit her whole testimony. The women found themselves with unsupportive employers, as many lost their jobs when they left to be tested. Even the man running the physical testing, Lovelace, did not envision these women as astronauts in the same sense as male candidates. He expected that once space had been initially ‘colonized,’ women would be needed as lab technicians, secretaries, and space ‘homemakers.’ Ugh. Even the most forward-thinking men of the time couldn’t get past the traditional gender roles that permeated the American culture.

The tested women were all incredible pilots, most with numerous flying records to their name and countless hours of flying time. However, one of NASA’s requirements kept women out of the pilot’s seat on any space-based aircraft for years to come: they had to have hours flying a jet aircraft. At that point in time, only the military flew jets and the military did not allow women to fly anything after the short-lived WASP program. So, regardless of how much they fought to become candidates, the women could always be pushed out because there was absolutely no way they could get the time they needed in a jet. Some women even considered trying to privately fund the purchase and flying of a jet, but that didn’t go anywhere in the end.

I was just slightly overwhelmed with the walls and roadblocks that these women faced in their campaign to fly to space. It made me more than thankful to live in 2011, when even though I still feel the cultural constraints of being a women in science, I have supporters. NASA so destroyed the hopes of accomplished women for becoming astronauts that they had to hire Nichelle Nichols, Uhura from Star Trek, to recruit females and other minorities to the shuttle astronaut core. Even then, as Weitekamp points out in the epilogue, there existed a two-track system for the astronaut core: one for PhDs and MDs, called ‘mission specialists,’ and one for pilots. There were a number of women who flew on the shuttles before a female was actually selected to command and pilot a shuttle mission.

FLATs (First Lady Astronaut Trainees) at one of Eileen Collins' launches on the space shuttle. Collins was the first woman to pilot the shuttle. 

Really, this was a most interesting book and fascinating read. I’m returning it to the library soon, so you should pick it up and read it. While I was initially interested in because it was about early female astronaut candidates, it really is a book anyone interested in gender equality or even history of aviation medicine should read. It spun out of the author’s thesis and is a well written book. Not too long either, I finished it in just 3 days by the pool :)