99s Then and Now

Astronauts

Sarah Gorelick Ratley & the Mercury 13 The Sputnik I satellite launched a "space race" between the USSR and the United States in 1957. By 1959, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had selected seven military test pilots as astronauts for its Mercury manned space vehicle program. That same year, Charter Member Ruth Nichols endured demanding physical tests under the Women in Space Earliest (WISE) Air Force program. Although she performed very well, it is unlikely that a 58-year-old woman was seriously considered an astronaut candidate. Meanwhile, renowned aerobatic pilot Betty Skelton was tested informally for a Look magazine story which asked, "Should a Girl Be First in Space?" Dr. Randolph Lovelace II thought that maybe there was space for women. Searching for exemplary women pilots, Lovelace found Jerrie Cobb, holder of speed, altitude, and endurance records, and 1959 Pilot of Year. When Cobb proved to be in outstanding physical condition for the rigors of space, Lovelace asked Jacqueline Cochran for funding and support to test more women, and the unofficial First Lady Astronaut Trainee (FLATs) program was born. Cobb spent hours at 99s Headquarters looking for possible candidates - experienced pilots with the guts to risk everything for a chance to go into space. "I was in the beauty shop when I got the phone call," says Sarah Gorelick Ratley. "The following day, I was on an airliner to Albuquerque." The week-long testing at the Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research included exhausting physical endurance tests, frozen ears and hands, swallowing three feet of rubber tubing, and nightly barium enemas. "When you're young, you can go through about anything," she says. Ratley brought unique qualifications to the program. Having taken up flying with the Civil Air Patrol in high school, she quickly progressed to flying charter, passenger hops, photo flights, and flight instructing. By 1961, Ratley was a commercial instrument instructor with 2000 hours and several Powder Puff Derbies under her belt, and was still young, single, and in good physical condition. "But I think my education and work background figured into being selected," she says. With a degree in mathematics, minors in physics and chemistry, some mechanical engineering training, she was working at AT&T as an Assistant Electrical Engineer. "While I was at the [Lovelace] clinic, they were already speaking of long flights for crewmembers, and being that I had the background in communications, they thought that would be my specialty." Ratley eagerly anticipated the Phase Three spaceflight simulation tests in Pensacola, Florida. "I really thought we had a shot at it, and it sounded like a terrific opportunity," Ratley says. So she resigned from her job at AT&T. "I think I heard on Friday, my last day at work, that the program was cancelled. It was very disappointing," Ratley recalls. "But you learn to adjust and go on." No one knows exactly how many were invited to testing, but these women passed the tests and later became known as The Mercury 13: Myrtle Thompson Cagle, Geraldyn "Jerrie" Cobb, Jan Dietrich, Marion Dietrich, Wally Funk, Jane "Janey" Briggs Hart, Jean Hixon, Gene Nora Stumbough Jessen, Irene Leverton, Sarah Gorelick Ratley, Bernice "B" Trimble Steadman, Geraldine "Jerri" Sloan Truhill, and Rhea Hurrle Woltman.		Colonel Pamela Melroy, Space Shuttle Pilot Four of the Mercury 13 had substantially more flight time than any of the seven Mercury astronauts, but none had jet time or military test pilot experience. A schoolteacher, a mother of eight, a 21-year-old competitive skier, attractive identical twins - the Mercury 13 hardly resembled the cookie-cutter white male military test pilots. And so their dream of space flight remained only a dream. Two years later, parachutist and trained cosmonaut Colonel Valentina Tereshkova blasted into space in the USSR's Vostok 6. To date, Tereshkova remains the only woman to have flown solo into space. NASA changed its rules in 1964 to open astronaut positions to non-pilots. But it was not until 1976 that it announced the goal of "having qualified minorities and women among the newly selected astronaut candidates." Astrophysicist Sally Ride, the first U.S. woman to launch into space in 1983 on the STS-7 Challenger, was by coincidence a licensed pilot. On September 17, 1961, just one day before the Mercury 13 had expected to begin spaceflight simulation tests, Pamela Ann Melroy was born. Melroy studied physics, astronomy, and planetary sciences, and joined the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) in college. After flying the KC-10, including in combat missions, Melroy became a C-17 test pilot. Then NASA called. Selected by NASA as an astronaut and shuttle pilot candidate in 1994, Colonel Melroy followed Colonel Eileen Collins, a former Air Force test pilot, and Commander Susan Kilrain, a former Navy test pilot. Collins made her first flight as a Space Shuttle Pilot in 1995 (STS-63 Discovery), and was the first woman Space Shuttle Commander in 1999 (STS-93 Columbia). Kilrain flew two space missions in 1997. "I am very eager," Melroy said before her first flight, which launched on October 11, 2000 (STS-92 Discovery). "It takes about a year to prepare for a shuttle mission. As the only 'rookie' (first-timer), I feel anxious to get my first flight under my belt so I can progress to becoming a left-seater." Shuttle pilot training is very heavily focused on systems and procedures. Weekly simulator sessions with the crew become increasingly difficult as they get better at working together. "There's nothing like the great feeling you get when you survive a tough scenario, like landing with limited flight instruments and flight controls and multiple electrical shorts," Melroy says. "Can you tell I love my job?!" Melroy flew into space again with STS-112 Atlantis in October 2002. She has logged over 5000 hours in over 45 aircraft, and over 562 hours in space. "Maybe we weren't a total failure," Sarah Ratley reflects. "If we set the groundwork so that some woman pilot could finally do it and be recognized for her own attributes, then it was all worth it." Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, second woman in space and first woman to walk in space, said, "A hundred years from now, it will sound strange that it was once questioned whether a woman should go into space."
For more information: The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of the Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight by Martha Ackmann (2003), Tethered Mercury: A Pilot's Memoir: The Right Stuff… But the Wrong Sex by Beatrice Trimble Steadman with Jody M. Clark (2001), Women Astronauts by Laura S. Woodmansee (2002), and NASA, www.jsc.nasa.gov/bios/.
99s Then and Now celebrates our history and current endeavors, and our woman pilot pioneers and peers. Astronauts: Research and writing by Jenny T. Beatty.