Low Academic Standards

One of the reasons that I get a bit irritated with identity politics "academic" programs in universities is that they are so often stronger in polemics than in research. I scratched my head about this supposed "Mercury 13" program. The claim is that these women entered astronaut training in the early 1960s, only to be scrubbed because of sexism. It was certainly possible, but I had never heard anything about it before, and unless it was intended as a response to the Soviet Union's female cosmonaut program, it seemed most unlikely.

James Oberg, who has spent entire entire life involved with the space program, has a devastating account of the dishonesty of the University of Wisconsin, and the credulity of journalists, who overwhelming bought the press releases, without any serious attempt at finding out what the real story was:

Truth #1: However impressive may have been the flight experience of the women undergoing the medical testing in 1960–1961, no white male with similar qualifications would ever have gotten a second glance by the NASA astronaut screening process. UW-Oshkosh and the press reports conceal this by equating all “flight experience” as of equivalent value for future astronaut candidates—small aircraft, commercial transport, jet transport, and even supersonic single-seat jet fighter—all are counted as of equal value.

Truth #2: There was no NASA program to even investigate whether women could pass the preliminary screening processes for astronaut selection. The activity was a private one sponsored by a doctor who was an independent consultant to NASA on astronaut selection.

Truth #3: There never was any training: all the activities involved medical screening.

Truth #4: The project ended after the investigator, Dr. Lovelace, had scheduled some screening time at the US Navy’s Pensacola flight training center and the Navy asked him for a charge number from the government sponsor of the project. He stalled all he could—there was no such sponsor—and the frustrated but still willing naval doctors finally called NASA to find out what was going on. When they found out that neither NASA nor any other government customer was sponsoring the tests, they told Lovelace that he had to pay or cancel. He cancelled his reservation. But there was no “program” that got “cancelled”, because there never had been any program to begin with.

Truth #5: There was no significant secrecy attached to any of activities, and no secrecy at all within a few months. The women’s activities were described in depth in contemporary press accounts and then in Congressional testimony.

All of these historical facts are easy to document and verify, but not a single journalist or academic shows any signs of ever doing so. Instead, they just accepted all of the assertions and cultural and social accusations of the university’s website and one particular book.

Although press reports quote a communications professor as claiming she assigned the book to her freshman class, it turns out that the university’s website states that a university panel had assigned the book to the entire freshman class. On a program called “The Common Intellectual Experience”, the university directed all incoming students to read the book, The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight by Holyoke University Department of Women’s Studies professor Martha Ackmann.

UPDATE: A reader actually took flying lessons from one of the "Mercury 13" in 1972; she mentioned it, and that "it was a mad enthusiasm of one or a small number of people, and it never went anywhere; she certainly never had any direct dealings with NASA." The reader suggests that the real reason it went nowhere wasn't even sexism, but that military test pilots (who were almost all the early astronauts) were regarded as having signed up for hazardous duty, and there would little political fallout if they were killed in flight.