Right Stuff, Wrong Sex

America's First Women in Space Program (Revised)
Erscheinungsjahr 2005
ISBN: 978-0-8018-8394-1
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 424 g

Reihe: Gender Relations in the American Experience

Winner, 2005 Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award, American Astronautical Society

On June 17, 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Curiously, unlike every previous milestone in the "space race," this event did not spur NASA to catch up by flying an American woman. Though there were suitable candidates-two years earlier, thirteen female pilots recruited by the private Woman in Space program had passed a strenuous physical exam and were ready for another stage of astronaut testing-American women would not escape earth's gravity for another twenty years.

In Right Stuff, Wrong Sex, Margaret Weitekamp shows how the Woman in Space program—conceived by Dr. William Randolph Lovelace and funded by world-famous pilot and businesswoman Jacqueline Cochran—challenged prevailing attitudes about women's roles and capabilities. In examining the experiences of the Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees (as the candidates called themselves), this book documents the achievements and frustrated hopes of a remarkable group of women whose desire to serve their country fell victim to hostility toward such aspirations. Drawing from archival research and interviews with participants, Weitekamp traces the rise and fall of the Woman in Space program within the context of the cold war and the thriving women's aviation culture of the 1950s. Weitekamp's study sheds light on a little-known but compelling chapter in the history of the U.S. space program and the rise of the women's movement in America.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitekamp, Margaret A

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. "Going to Town for the Men of Science": Randy Lovelace and Jackie Cochran
2. "This Buck Rogers Nonsense": Aviation and Aerospace Medicine
3. WASPs, Whirly-Girls, and Ninety-Nines: Female Pilots and Postwar Women's Aviation
4. "Should a Girl Be First in Space?": Betty Skelton, Ruth Nichols, and Jerrie Cobb
5. "Initial Examinations for Female Astronaut Candidates": Lovelace's Woman in Space Program
6. "I Offer Myself—No Less Can I Do": Jerrie Cobb, NASA, and the Pensacola Cancellation
7. "A Fact of Our Social Order": Jerrie Cobb, John Glenn, and the House Subcommittee Hearings
8. "Send Jerrie into Space": Several Epilogues to Lovelace's Woman in Space Program
Conclusion
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Weitekamp, Margaret A
Margaret A. Weitekamp is curator in the Division of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.