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+--- Thread: Mercury 13 (2018) by David Sington (/showthread.php?tid=5548)
Mercury 13 (2018) by David Sington - cranefly - 07-10-2020
SETI holds a movie night once a year. This year it was ZOOMed. The choice was Mercury 13, about 13 women who underwent astronaut training during the Mercury program. They were never part of Program Mercury, and never officially astronauts. They couldn't possibly qualify, as it required long hours of flight experience in military jets, and women weren't permitted to fly them. So the deck was stacked against them, in that and many other ways.
However, Dr. Lovelace, who reminds me of Dr. Welby, and who was in charge of Program Mercury astronaut training, felt that women had certain advantages (smaller, lighter, etc.), and so he started a study on the side, independently financed, selecting 13 women with lots of non-military jet flight experience and putting them through the same training rigomoro.
This proceeded for some time, with promising results, until President Johnson caught wind of it and sent Dr. Welby a harsh note to "Stop this nonsense!" Later on, there were congressional hearings wherein the women pleaded their case, only to be properly put in their place by our illustrious leaders, as well as by the gods of that era, John Glenn and the other astronauts.
Worth a watch, to my mind. The ZOOM presentation fed off Netflix streaming, if I'm not mistaken.