Mercury 13 Page #4

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in the morning at breakfast.

It was always Scott Carpenter.

It was just an amazing time.

Theyd make fun of my father

and the tests that he made them do, and

But there was obviously respect there.

I think the tests out of Dr.

Lovelaces place in Albuquerque out there,

uh, certainly some of the tests we had

out there were the most trying.

And its rather difficult to pick one,

because if you figure how many openings

there are on the human body

and how far you can go in any one of em

You gave it away.

Now you answer which one would be

the toughest for you, and thats it.

The cookie cutters. Cookie-cutter males.

And cookie-cutter means

there was no difference in their religion,

in their state of origin, or anything.

They were just all exactly the same.

My father felt very strongly about having

a group of women astronauts.

If youre a pioneer, you just start

with your instincts, I guess.

He felt that women had

a definite role in space,

that there were... physically and

emotionally, that they had some attributes

that were stronger

than the male astronauts.

And he wanted to test their capability

by comparing their test results to

the test results of the male astronauts.

Clearly,

one of the women in his life

that catapulted that into action

was his relationship with Jackie Cochran.

Im Jacqueline Cochran, and I really would

like to be the first woman in space.

Anyone whos spent as much time in the air

as I have in the last 34 years

is bound to yearn

to go a little bit farther.

Jackie Cochran was my godmother.

And

Floyd Odlum actually was

on our board of directors.

I think he was the president.

He was the original chairman of our board

for the Lovelace Clinic.

So he turned to Floyd Odlum and Jackie,

and they financed that study.

This was his program.

Dr. Lovelace did it on his own,

outside of his contract with NASA

and invited 25 women

to come and take the physical exam,

very similar

to what the astronauts were taking.

They had a list

of the top pilots that they knew.

And one of the first that was called

was Jerrie Cobb.

She was a great gal.

I was asked by Dr. Lovelace

and General Flickinger

to be the first woman

to go through these astronaut tests.

This was in 1959.

Both of them had just come back

from a scientific meeting in Moscow.

At that time, they had heard the Russians

were gonna train women cosmonauts.

And this was over three years ago.

So they thought we ought to get together

and start doing something.

They asked me if I would be the first

woman to undergo the astronaut test,

which I was, couldnt say yes fast enough,

and then...

Now, I knew Jerrie

because she flew the Aero Commander.

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