Another subtle advantage that some men, especially military pilots, may have had was a passion for flight arising from their childhood interests in military aircraft and the combat exploits of pilots in World War II and the Korean War. As boys, they built or collected model airplanes and were well read in accounts of heroic wartime battles in the air.[8] Flight was “in their blood” and their mindset. It was not a giant step for them to become military aviators when they came of age and then to prepare for flight in space as a logical next step. Women who became passionate about flight generally had a different entrée, not through interests in military aviation but what has been called the “romance” of flight. They idolized early female aviators and wanted to experience the freedom of being in the air, enjoying the panoramic views, performing in air shows and competing in air races, and feeling a sense of technical accomplishment in flying. These early differences in childhood interests may have been formative in first enticing boys onto a path that ultimately led to space. Girls caught up later as they forged their own paths in general aviation before military aviation was an option.

  Likewise, boys tended to be more attracted than girls to early popular science fiction, written by men and populated with male characters such as Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Tom Gordon in comic book and television series, and the more serious and visionary novels of Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and others.[9] A series of popular Walt Disney television programs in the 1950s presented space travel as possible and imminent. At the time, though, the culture of space science fiction was dominantly masculine, and it shaped a vision of the future that initially seemed more possible for men than women. Had toymakers, writers, and producers more consciously appealed to girls and women, females might have been as culturally conditioned at a young age as males to imagine themselves in, and prepare themselves for, aviation and spaceflight.

  Other requirements for astronauts included age and height (under forty years and less than 5 ft. 11 in. tall); a bachelor’s degree in engineering or physical sciences; graduation from a military test pilot school; 1,500 flight hours; and expertise in high-performance jet- and rocket-powered aircraft. NASA screened 508 military test pilot personnel records, found only 110 men who met the minimum standards, tested and interviewed fifty-six of them, and selected only seven Project Mercury astronauts in 1959 to make the first solo flights in space. It was such a clear assumption that the candidates would be men that it is unlikely anyone noticed that the education and aviation requirements implicitly excluded women.

  NASA selected fifty-nine more astronauts during the 1960s to fly the two-man Gemini missions and three-man Apollo missions, and to occupy Skylab, the nation’s first space station. NASA also acquired seven more astronauts, all of whom were white men, from the Air Force when its Manned Orbiting Lab program was canceled. NASA modified the requirements for astronauts slightly during those years, seeking civilian as well as military pilots, dropping (but still preferring) the requirement for test pilot status, and reducing the number of flight hours to 1,000. These changes might have opened a door to women pilots, but NASA did not directly seek them.

  Responding to pressure from the scientific community, in 1965 the agency made a major exception and recruited scientist-astronauts who were not required to be pilots. The call for applicants did not specify men, but the assumption was evident in the requirements to submit transcripts “from all institutions of higher education which he has attended” and forms “completed by his physician.”[10] The group of six male astronauts selected in 1965 from about nine hundred applications included two engineers, two physicians, an astrophysicist, and a geologist, who would later receive flight training. NASA recruited eleven more scientists and engineers in the class of 1967, also all male. The invitation to apply was directed to the nation’s young scientists and engineers of exceptional ability, with assurance that anyone selected would be able to “maintain his scientific competence” and “continue his growth as a productive scientist in his field of interest.”[11] These two expansions of the astronaut corps could have been an opportunity to recruit women scientists, but the scientific community at the time was predominantly male, and all those involved in discussions about admitting scientist-astronauts were men. Allegedly, some women applied but did not make the cut. It is unclear whether any documentation of such female applicants exists to verify this claim; none has been cited.[12]

  Seventy-three men had entered the NASA astronaut corps by 1970, before recruitments ceased as the Apollo missions to the Moon came to an end. NASA made no explicit effort to recruit women scientists for the 1965 and 1967 classes, a missed opportunity that might have moved forward the inclusion of women into spaceflight by a decade or more. Nor did NASA make an effort to seek qualified Black pilots or scientists. In the race to reach the Moon, diversity of the astronaut corps was not a priority. More than enough qualified men were available, and manned spaceflight remained a white man’s world.

  By education, aviation experience, and presumption, men had all the advantages to become astronauts during the pioneering first years of spaceflight. It was inequitable but not necessarily intentional. These advantages were embedded in long-held traditions and beliefs about the proper roles of men and women in American society. Men pursued education and remunerative work to provide for their families; women took care of the home and children. Men did hazardous work, served in the military, and handled complex or dangerous technology; women nurtured and protected families. These presumptions colored much broader conceptions of masculinity and femininity, affecting how people should look, dress, act, and engage in sports, politics, the media, business, and a host of other gendered domains.

  During a 1962 congressional hearing into whether NASA was discriminating against women in selecting astronauts, America’s venerated first man in orbit, John Glenn, testified, “The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.” No one laughed or argued with him. He claimed that a woman who could meet the high standards would be welcome, but qualifications should not be reduced. It was not an unusual gender stereotype to assume that women’s participation would mean lowering standards.[13]

  It would take concerted efforts by individuals, organizations, and organized movements to make space for women and people of color to have the same opportunities as white men. Demands for changes in law, policy, education, and the military services yielded results in the 1960s and 1970s that challenged prejudices, removed obstacles, and opened paths that would eventually lead to a more diverse astronaut corps that better reflected the US populace. Changes were not instant; they came through a long social struggle to overcome sex and race discrimination during years marked by anger, hope, resistance, disappointment, and incremental progress. Society gradually absorbed changes in attitudes and practices, but the work of equalizing opportunity remained unfinished well into the next century.

  Why Not Astronauttes?

  The idea of women as astronauts was not unheard of as America entered the space age, but it was not taken seriously. The language itself was dismissive: journalists and others referred to “lady astronauts,” “girl astronauts,” “astronettes.”

  A few people, however, began to argue that women eventually would travel into space and therefore should be taken seriously and prepared for it. In 1962, the New York Times published a long article by a physician asking, “Why Not ‘Astronauttes’ Also?” Although he betrayed chauvinism disguised as humor more than once (“If man is to colonize the planets, if celestial housekeeping is ever to be instituted, the ‘second sex’ must have booking on future space flights.”), he compared the sexes in various physical and mental abilities and concluded that there was no reason, except bias and habit, to exclude women from spaceflight. In essence, an astronaut must have a healthy mind and body and certain acquired skills. Given opportunities to acquire those skills, both women and men could meet that standard.[14] By 1970, a NASA executive in manned spaceflight admitted this in a public forum: average people in good health, including women, would be able to fly into space.[15]

  Prominent writer, politician, and ambassador Clare Booth Luce wrote an outraged piece for Life magazine immediately after the Soviet Union launched Valentina Tereshkova as the first woman in space in 1963. Luce saw the failure of the United States to recognize her significance as a costly Cold War blunder. Too many American male space experts dismissed Tereshkova’s flight as a stunt or claimed that she had been hysterical or hadn’t performed well. Luce instead praised it as a symbol that Russian women “actively share (not passively bask, like American women) in the glory of conquering space.” Already astronauts and cosmonauts had become symbols of the way of life of their nations, and she found it shameful that the United States did not yet recognize and elevate “the inherent equality of men and women.”[16]

  Girls and young women began to write to NASA during the 1960s, asking how they could prepare to become astronauts. This caused some consternation as the agency’s public information officers asked how to respond. Early answers to such letters were blunt: NASA had no plans for women astronauts “because of the degree of scientific and flight training, and the physical characteristics, which are required.”[17] Yet there was a dawning awareness that women probably would be included eventually. An inquiry sent a decade later received a much more encouraging response. Director of Flight Crew Operations and longtime chief of the Astronaut Office “Deke” Slayton wrote to university-level aerospace engineering student and pilot Marsha Ivins in 1970, “The exact time when we would seriously consider women is indefinite, but I am sure it is inevitable.” Meanwhile, she should do the best she could in her studies and apply to NASA when the next astronaut selection program was announced. She applied, was selected to be an astronaut in 1984, and flew on five space shuttle missions.[18]

  By the time men started going to the Moon, the idea of women having a place in space was becoming more common but still not taken seriously. A 1968 Washington Post article led with the question, “Is NASA for co-eds?” and stated, “Some scientists wonder if the time has come to give the weaker sex a whirl at it.” Interviewing some men attending a technical conference, the reporter heard these reasons that it wasn’t time yet for women in space: the mixture of the sexes in a spaceship could create an ethical problem, separate onboard facilities would be needed [for privacy], spacecraft were not designed for mixed sexes, men’s sexual needs on long flights needed to be considered, and “there’s just too much difference between men and women [who] really don’t speak the same language.” Some suggested that all-woman crews might be a better solution than mixed-sex crews.[19]

  By 1971 some of these arguments were waning. Popular science writer Isaac Asimov published a scathing article in Ladies’ Home Journal castigating NASA’s men to give up “their stubborn male pride.” Doubting that it was impossible to find a qualified woman in a nation of 200 million people, he claimed, “It is just that women are not wanted in the U.S. space program. Period. Yet they should be.” He cited their smaller and lighter size, resistance to stress and some common physical disorders, ready adaptation to weightlessness, and longer lifespan as reasons to move beyond NASA’s focus on masculinity. He also argued that single-sex long-term missions on the Moon or to Mars were unrealistic, so women should be included as scientists and engineers, not as companions for the relief of men. He concluded that it wasn’t worth the money, effort, or dreams to continue a “Men Only” space program. “Call if off, call it all off, or open it to the human race, the whole human race.”[20]

  Some women, of course, flew airplanes, attended universities, attained graduate degrees, entered fields traditionally occupied by men, and followed their interests and talents to achieve their goals regardless of societal expectations, but they were exceptions. It would take more women seeking opportunities and pushing against boundaries for the latent potential of women to be demonstrated and even more assertive tactics, both social and legal, for that potential to be recognized and nourished. Individual and organized efforts in the 1960s through 1970s initiated social changes that would start opening the way for women to enter into coveted domains and, by the end of the century, bring women to the fore as bona fide astronauts.

  Women Pilots

  Women were interested in flying airplanes from the outset. Katharine Wright, Wilbur and Orville’s younger sister, was involved in their enterprise to invent, fly, and sell aircraft. Within a decade of the men’s historic 1903 flight, in the United States and Europe, women had flown as passengers and the first women had earned pilot’s licenses, made solo flights over land and water, parachuted from an airplane, competed in an air race and an air show, become a test pilot, established the first flying school, and opened a business to rent and sell airplanes. The achievements kept mounting as more women took to the sky, some flying in air shows and barnstorming to show off their daredevil piloting skills and others pushing the boundaries of distance and duration in flight to win races and prizes. It was clear that women could fly aircraft, although not everyone was convinced that they should.[21]

  Flying became popular among women in the first half of the twentieth century as they sought adventure and freedom in flight. It was satisfying to do something as bold as men did, to compete for trophies as men did, to set speed and altitude records as men did, and to enjoy the renown that came with being an aviatrix. Flying was a modern pastime and a powerful way to demonstrate their competence and independence. Aviation began to change attitudes about what women could do. Aircraft companies began to hire women for advertisements and as stewardesses to demonstrate how safe air travel was, using women to boost passenger traffic, airline growth, and revenue, but the corporate role of pilot remained reserved for men. Much of their history and many of the names of early women aviatrixes were not remembered beyond their time in the limelight, but that was remedied and celebrated by the turn of the twenty-first century as women’s historians sought to make them visible. The few names that come readily to mind in general—Bessie Coleman, Amelia Earhart, Jackie Cochran, Jerrie Cobb, Jerrie Mock—stand for thousands more who are less well known but signify the increasing presence and abilities of women in aviation.

  World War II created a dramatic opportunity for white American women to leave aviation as a performance and enter aviation as a real job. Such opportunities were rare for women of color because of racial bias. As men flooded into military service and the war effort demanded vast production of military materiel, women stepped into the gaps throughout the economy. Thousands of women held jobs in aviation, engineering, and heavy and light industry for the first time. Some of the aircraft companies, accepting the necessity of hiring women, offered training programs, such as the Curtiss-Wright Company’s Cadettes program, to quickly place “girls” in entry-level aeronautical engineering positions so they could assemble planes. Women trainers taught male pilots how to fly by instruments. Most famously, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), about one thousand pilots organized by famous aviator Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran, tested and delivered military aircraft during the war years, towed targets for antiaircraft artillery training, and flew other missions as needed. They flew fighters, bombers, and other military operational aircraft. Women were essential in keeping the nation supplied with aircraft and materiel to win the war, and their service was vital to the wartime economy. Many women had their first taste of earning an income, shouldering responsibility outside the home, and contributing as citizens to a national need—their first experience of serving in a man’s world—and they liked it.

  Despite their heroic wartime efforts, women were released from employment when the men returned. WASP women were not granted status as veterans until 1977, nor were they offered the same educational and economic benefits as men who served. The windows of opportunity that had opened suddenly closed, and in the late 1950s and early 1960s women began to agitate for them to open again. Women were making headway in some aviation roles, noticeably as flight attendants and private pilots in general and commercial aviation, but the real prize—a seat in the cockpit of large aircraft—was not yet attainable.

  One way to open the cockpit doors was to increase the profile of women aviators through competition. Setting records and winning trophies earned respect and proved that women could handle aircraft with precision at high speeds and altitudes. The premier woman aviator in the United States for almost forty years was Jackie Cochran, who broke and set many absolute records in competition with men. Although she wasn’t as interested in setting women’s records (but she indeed set many), she was eager to be the first woman to achieve a given milestone. She was one of the first women to fly jets, the first woman to complete a transatlantic jet flight, the first woman to fly a bomber across the Atlantic to Britain, and in 1953, flying an F-86 Sabre, the first woman to break the sound barrier. In 1964 she set a new record as a woman pilot by exceeding Mach 2, flying an F-104G Starfighter at 1,429 miles per hour. Cochran was the first woman to gain special access to military jets to set some of her speed and altitude records. She thought that if she could fly the most advanced aircraft, so could other women.