Space invaders

Bounced from astronaut training because of their gender, the Mercury 13 get no respect.

By Martha Ackmann

Jun 27, 2000 | Earlier this month, Congress cleared the way for the crew of Apollo 11 to receive the Congressional Gold Medal. It is the culmination of official recognition for the men of the first moon mission, whose past honors include White House receptions, Smithsonian exhibits, a commemorative stamp and an action toy of their spacecraft.

Someday, if they're very lucky, the Mercury 13 flight crew might get to be an answer on "Jeopardy." The question? "What prospective group of astronauts became astro-nots midway through their testing for the job?"

It would be the highest honor that the group of would-be astronauts has ever received, despite their historical achievements and a brush with fame. "I'd like NASA to stop denying the contribution we made and were prepared to make," says Jerri Sloan Truhill of the Mercury 13 group. "Instead they treat us as interlopers, invading their space."

It figures. The Mercury 13 comprised a bunch of amazing women whose timing was all wrong. Pilots handpicked in the early '60s to be potential space cowgirls, they aced a series of physical tests designed to determine their suitability as astronauts, in some cases tests more rigorous than those given to men. Despite extraordinary performance in all categories (perhaps in spite of it), they could not clear the political hurdle presented by their gender. To quote John Glenn, testifying at a 1962 congressional hearing on official astronaut qualifications: "The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order."

Three years before that hearing, Randolph Lovelace II, chairman of NASA's Special Advisory Committee on Life Sciences, had just selected Glenn, Alan Shepard and the rest of the famed Mercury 7 astronauts. He was curious to know whether female pilots could measure up to the same rigorous tests that the men had taken at his clinic in Albuquerque, N.M. The space race was in full swing and if America couldn't beat the Russians in sending a man into space, thought Lovelace, then why not send women?

Lovelace asked Jerrie Cobb, a celebrated woman pilot out of Oklahoma, to come to Albuquerque to take the initial round of exams and to help him identify other women who might make the grade.

In all, 26 women pilots came to New Mexico to be tested for what was described in letters from Lovelace to the candidates as "the women in space program." Thirteen women -- the Mercury 13 -- passed the tests: Cobb, Myrtle "K" Cagle, twin sisters Jan and Marion Dietrich, Wally Funk, Jane Hart, Jean Hixson, Gene Nora Jessen, Irene Leverton, Sarah Gorelick Ratley, Bernice "B" Steadman, Truhill and Rhea Allison Woltman.

The tests were not easy. Many of today's female astronauts say their own tests pale in comparison to those taken by the Mercury 13. Some 50 different exams measured the women's physical strength, conditioning, endurance and adaptability. They endured nearly 100 X-rays, drank radioactive water, swallowed rubber hosing, had their ears injected with freezing water to trigger disorientation.

At times the performance standards were higher for the Mercury 13 than for the men of the Mercury 7. Funk cites the sensory deprivation test she took as a case in point. Clinicians confessed to her that the "dog dip" was longer and more isolating for the women than it was for the men.

The test required that Funk float in an 8-foot tank of warm water -- a tank located in a small, airtight room with no sounds, no smells, no stimulation of any kind. The objective of the test was to measure how soon a subject might become dysfunctional and whether hallucinations set in.

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