Americas first female astronaut candidate, pilot Jerrie Cobb, who pushed for equality in space but never reached its heights, has died. Dr. Lovelace administered these tests through the First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLAT) program without official NASA approval. United States Information Agency/PhotoQuest/Getty Images. Jerrie Cobb, Janey Hart (a fellow FLAT), aviator Jacqueline Cochran, NASA's deputy administrator George Low, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter testified before Congress on July 17 and 18, 1962, a year before Gordon Cooper flew on the final Mercury flight. At her invitation, eight of the First Lady Astronaut Trainees attended her launch. How I would love to see our beautiful blue planet Earth floating in the blackness of space. It took 15 years before the next U.S. women were selected to go to space, and the Soviets didn't fly another female for nearly 20 years after Tereshkova's flight. Still hopeful, Cobb emerged in 1998 to make another pitch for space as NASA prepared to launch Mercury astronaut John Glenn the first American to orbit the world on shuttle Discovery at age 77. At seventeen years old, while attending Classen High School in Oklahoma City, Cobb earned her private pilot's license and she earned her commercial pilot's license the following year. Alan Shephard, the first American in space, had bailed on the simulator during his first test while Cobb spun in it for 45 minutes. Geraldyn "Jerrie" Cobb, record-setting pilot and advocate for women in spaceflight, died on March 18, her family reported in an April 18 statement. Cobb and Jane Hart testified about the women's successes. Although Cobb successfully completed all three stages of physical and psychological evaluation that were used in choosing the first seven Mercury astronauts, this was not an official NASA program, and she was unable to rally support in Congress for adding women to the astronaut program. Jerrie Cobb, Rhea Hurrle, and Wally Funk went to Oklahoma City for an isolation tank test. "If its a new play, people want it to be the best it can be. Jerrie Cobb by her jet fighter in 1961. By 1964, Cobb left NASA and spent the next fifty years operating an airlift service to indigenous peoples in remote areas of the Amazon. Jerrie Cobb Papers, 1931-2012; item description, dates. It took another 20 years for NASA to send the first American woman to space. Cobb was dismissed one week after commenting: Im the most unconsulted consultant in any government agency., She wrote in her 1997 autobiography Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot, My country, my culture, was not ready to allow a woman to fly in space.. Jerrie Cobb's father taught her to fly a biplane at age twelve and by age sixteen she was flying the Piper J-3 Cub, a popular light aircraft. She completed testing for NASA in 1959 and was one of NASAs Mercury 13. U.S. Air Force Medical Service/Wikimedia Commons. In 1960, Jerrie Cobb was rapidly becoming a celebrity. America's first female astronaut candidate, pilot Jerrie Cobb, who pushed for equality in space but never reached its heights, has died at her home in Florida.. Cobb died March 18 following a . Without an official NASA request to run the tests, the Navy would not allow the use of their facilities. This series also includes the evaluation of Cobb's astronaut test results (#2.8), summary of Cobb's test results (#2.10), and transcript of the hearing with Cobb and Hart before the House Subcommittee in 1962 (#2.13). [2] John Glenn's main purpose on his space flight was to observe the effects of a micro-gravity environment on the body of an aged individual. As a corporate pilot, Cobb set multiple records, including an altitude record. The Story Of Jerrie Cobb, The Record-Breaking Pilot Who Should Have Been Americas First Female Astronaut. [19] Cobb has been honored by the Brazilian, Colombian, Ecuadorian, French, and Peruvian governments. In total, 68 percent of the lady astronauts passed, where only 56 percent of the male trainees passed. Cobb again met with gender issues in South America, as existing missionary and humanitarian groups would not hire a female pilot, so she started her own unaffiliated foundation and flew solo for more than 50 years. I came out with a play that no one would ever produce, because it needed too many actors. "We seek, only, a place in our Nation's space future without discrimination," Cobb said. I would give my life to fly in space, I really would, Cobb told The Associated Press at age 67 in 1998. She and Jane Hart wrote to President John Kennedy and visited Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Their reasons were practical rather than political: women tended to handle stress better, weigh less, consume less oxygen and use less energy than men, making them great test subjects for spaceflight. Oklahoma native Jerrie Cobb received her pilots license at age 17, her commercial pilots license at 18, and flight and ground instructors rating at 21. Jerrie Cobb served as an inspiration to many of our members in her record breaking, her desire to go into space, and just to prove that women could do what men could do, said Laura Ohrenberg, headquarters manager in Oklahoma City for the Ninety-Nines Inc., an international organisation of licensed women pilots. (Image credit: NASA) Jerrie Cobb, the first woman to pass . Part of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Repository. She is the "her" in They Promised Her the Moon . ", She wrote in her 1997 autobiography "Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot," "My country, my culture, was not ready to allow a woman to fly in space.". In 1963, Jerrie Cobb and the Mercury 13 watched as the Soviets sent the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, to space. San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive/Wikimedia Commons. Cobb received many awards including the 1972 Harmon International Trophy as the woman pilot of the year and the Amelia Earhart Gold Medal of Achievement. "Were able to talk about these women like theyre our family now," the latter says. Nick Greene is a software engineer for the U.S. Navy Space and Naval Warfare Engineering Center. She spent an entire year screening nearly 800 female pilots to identify potential astronaut trainees, and she found many of the women had racked up significantly more flight time than the male astronauts. They found a freedom in flying; a way they could have total control.". But Cobb didnt let reductive and sexist comments like this prevent her from demanding a place for women in the space program. All of them met NASAs basic criteria. They can't . SNP will rebrand and shift focus away from independence, predicts Michael Gove, MV Pentalina Incident: Dozens of passengers evacuated as Pentland FerriesMV Pentalina runs aground on Orkney, Geraldyn Jerrie Cobb, aviator. The preeminent research library on the history of women in the United States, the Schlesinger Library documents women's lives from the past and present for the future. They underwent fourdays of testing, doing the same physical and psychological tests as the original Mercury Seven had. Ollstein hopes audiences will leave her play with a sense of how hard these women fought, and how many of their stories are lost. From birth, Cobb was on the move as is the case for many children of military families. He is also the U.N. World Space Week Coordinator for Antarctica. As time passes, the Mercury 13 trainees are passing on, but their dream lives on in the women who live and work and space for NASA and space agencies in Russia, China, Japan, and Europe. You have permission to edit this article. ThoughtCo. Born in 1931 in that same state, Jerrie Cobb learned to fly at age 12, and later took any job that would let her keep flying: dusting crops, patrolling pipelines, and eventually becoming a flight instructor herself. Also included in this series are letters from the public, supporters, colleagues, etc. The Space Race may have officially ended 50 years ago when the United States put the first man on the moon, but the Soviet Union had already beaten us to several other milestones along the way. - Informationen zum Thema Jerrie Cobb NASA space pilot woman pilot female pilot Mercury 13 Amazon", National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Cobb, Geraldyn M. "Jerrie", https://www.thoughtco.com/errie-cobb-3072207, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jerrie_Cobb&oldid=1143859765, University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma alumni, Classen School of Advanced Studies alumni, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Articles having same image on Wikidata and Wikipedia, Wikipedia articles incorporating text from NASA, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Named Pilot of the Year by the National Pilots Association, Fourth American to be awarded Gold Wings of the, Honored by the government of Ecuador for pioneering new air routes over the Andes Mountains and Andes jungle, 1962 Received the Golden Plate Award of the, Received Pioneer Woman Award for her "courageous frontier spirit" flying all over the. [23][24], Laurel Ollstein's 2017 play They Promised Her the Moon (revised in 2019) tells the story of Jerrie Cobb and her struggle to become an astronaut. . From her first airplane ride in an open-cockpit Waco at age 12, Cobb dreamt of and subsequently built a career in aviation, no easy task for a woman of the 1950s. This test simulated bringing a spinning spacecraft under control and was one of many that the women of the Mercury 13 went through in order to qualify for space flight. ", Being able to revise between productions is a unique strength of the mediumshe went through several drafts as she kept learning new historical details. Cobb used her softball earnings to buy a plane. Born 5 Mar 1931 in Norman, Cleveland, Oklahoma, United States. They were engaged for two years when he was killed in an airplane accident. The Mercury 13 were thirteen American women who took part in a privately funded program run by William Randolph Lovelace II aiming to test and screen women for spaceflight.The participantsFirst Lady Astronaut Trainees (or FLATs) as Jerrie Cobb called themsuccessfully underwent the same physiological screening tests as had the astronauts selected by NASA on April 9, 1959, for Project Mercury. But NASA already had its Mercury 7 astronauts, all jet test pilots and all military men. While some had learned of the examinations by word of mouth, many were recruited through the Ninety-Nines, a women pilot's organization. These televised segments were compiled by the Jerrie Cobb Foundation as part of the publicity campaign to promote Cobb's second attempt for space flight. When search suggestions are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. Photographs, clippings, and correspondence of Jerrie Cobb, an aviator, Mercury 13 astronaut, and advocate of women's participation in the space program. Prior to the lady astronauts, no women had qualified for astronaut training by NASAs standard. Jerrie Cobbs prestigious career brought her to the attention of NASA physicians. Meet Jerrie Cobb. Although Cobb and the Mercury 13 never went to space, they chipped away at a barrier that eventually fell, allowing women a place in the stars. She was a born athlete, playing softball for the local team, City Queens. Then it took 12 more years before a woman actually flew an American spacecraft. By day, she flew over uncharted territory, pioneering air routes; when there were no maps, she made her own. Born: 5 March 1931 in Norman, Oklahoma, United States. Having taken up flying at just age 12, she held numerous world aviation records for speed, distance and altitude, and had logged more than 10,000 hours of flight time. Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. They contacted President Kennedy and vice-president Johnson. In her autobiography, Cobb described how she danced on the wings of her plane in the Amazon moonlight, when learning via radio on 20 July, 1969, that Apollo 11s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had landed on the moon. Cobb maintained that the geriatric space study should also include an older woman. Copyright in other papers in the collection may be held by their authors, or the authors' heirs or assigns. Copyright 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Jerrie Cobb trained on NASA's Multi-Axis Space Test Inertia Facility (MASTIF) in 1960, shortly after the male Mercury 7 astronauts did so. Topics: Because women required less oxygen than men and typically had a lower mass, Lovelace pushed for a female astronaut training program. In 1978, six women were chosen as astronaut candidates by NASA: Rhea Seddon, Kathryn Sullivan, Judith Resnik, Sally Ride, Anna Fisher, and Shannon Lucid. Dr. Lt. Col. William Randolph Lovelace II in a 1943 photo. She was 88. Yet NASA had no interest in admitting women to its astronaut program and neither did the male astronauts. It didnt. Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. Copyright in the papers created by Jerrie Cobb is held by the President and Fellows of Harvard College for the Schlesinger Library. [6], On March 18, 2019, thirteen days after her 88th birthday, Cobb died at her home in Florida. NASAAlthough Jerrie Cobb scored in the top two percent of NASA astronaut training, the agency refused to allow women like her to join. Jerrie Cobb made another push to revive the women's testing. "Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream". Once the United States became involved in World War II Cobb's family moved once again, this time to Wichita Falls, Texas where Cobb's father joined his active U.S. National Guard unit. Greene, Nick. Already a veteran pilot at age 29, she aced a battery of tests given to women eager to join the men already jostling for trips to space. [6], Cobb set three aviation records in her 20s: the 1959 world record for nonstop long-distance flight, the 1959 world light-plane speed record, and a 1960 world altitude record for lightweight aircraft of 37,010 feet (11,280m; 11.28km). She was dismissed one week after commenting: "I'm the most unconsulted consultant in any government agency. Kat. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8, Continue reading your article witha WSJ subscription, Already a subscriber? ", Based out of LA, Ollstein has been present in San Diego throughout development, and is still rewriting in the room. Since all military test pilots were men at the time, this effectively excluded women. She was a bush pilot in missionary endeavors in the Amazon for the next forty years and established the Jerrie Cobb Foundation, Inc. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1981 for her work with the native people of the Amazon and was later the recipient of the Amelia Earhart Award and Medal. The Oklahoma Historical Society and Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study have significant Cobb artifacts collections and archives. Altogether, 13 women passed the arduous physical testing and became known as the Mercury 13. She set six world aviation records and served the Navy as a ferry pilot delivering planes overseas. That changed when Dr. William Randolph "Randy" Lovelace II invited pilot Geraldyn "Jerrie" Cobb to undergo the physical fitness testing regimen that he had helped to develop to select the original U.S. astronauts, the "Mercury Seven." Cobb was the first test subject recruited in 1960 by Dr. William Randolph "Randy" Lovelace II and Brig. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. "I would give my life to fly in space, I really would," Cobb told The Associated Press at age 67 in 1998. Note: this press release was prepared by Jerrie Cobb's family. This is the story of how rampant sexism kept a pioneering pilot out of space history. In NASAs early years, the head of its Special Committee on Bioastronautics, Randy Lovelace, also ran a private foundation for medical research in Albuquerque. NASA wouldnt send a female astronaut into orbit until 20 years later. [2] In 1948, Cobb attended Oklahoma College for Women for a year. Instead of making her an astronaut, NASA tapped her as a consultant to talk up the space programme. Because NASA required astronauts have experience specifically in military jet aircraft, and the US military did not allow female jet pilots, it was de facto impossible for them to become astronauts. She was the first to complete each of the tests. "It just didn't work out then, and I just hope and pray it will now," she added. Finally, on the 17th and 18th of July 1962, Representative Victor Anfuso (R) of New York convened public hearings before a special Subcommittee of the House . In the 1950s, female pilots were rare. (Image credit: NASA) Funding wasn't the problem, as the FLATs program. WASP, Born in 1931 in that same state, Jerrie Cobb learned to fly at age 12, and later took any job that would let her keep flying: dusting crops, patrolling pipelines, and eventually becoming a flight . [2], By 1959, at age 28, Cobb was a pilot and manager for Aero Design and Engineering Company, which also made the Aero Commander aircraft she used in her record-making feats, and she was one of the few women executives in aviation. Specifically, NASA wanted to observe whether the effects of weightlessness had positive consequences on the balance, metabolism, blood flow, and other bodily functions of an elderly person. It failed. Clare Booth Luce published an article about the Mercury 13in Life magazine criticizing NASA for not achieving this first. Ms. Cobb patiently explained that women pilots were barred in the Air Force, which did almost all the jet flying at the time. Series is arranged alphabetically.Series II, PHOTOGRAPHS, 1931?-2000s (#PD.1-PD.47), includes photographs, slides, and negatives documenting Cobb's astronaut training, her career as a pilot, and her flights ferrying supplies and aid to indigenous peoples in South America. In one test, the women each had to swallow three feet of rubber tubing. In 1961, Cobb became the first woman to pass astronaut testing. On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. And the lady astronaut trainees, as she called them, underwent the same grueling fitness tests as NASA astronauts. ", "Girl Cosmonaut Ridicules Praying of U.S. Woman Pilot", "The Space Review: You've come a long way, baby! Cobb died in Florida at age 88 on March 18 following a. The results were announced at a conference in Stockholm, Sweden. News Corp is a global, diversified media and information services company focused on creating and distributing authoritative and engaging content and other products and services. By now, Cobb wasnt the only woman taking the astronaut test, 19 women joined in total. NASA never flew another elderly person in space, male or female. She was ready to fly, but never made it into space. Cobb had one older sister, Carolyn. Although the group has been called the Mercury 13, a misleading and ahistorical moniker, Cobb called them her Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees.. .css-16c7pto-SnippetSignInLink{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;cursor:pointer;}Sign In, Copyright 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. At the same time, she continued helping Lovelace find additional women pilots to examine, eventually compiling a list of 25 pilots to invite. Then came the male astronauts (including John Glenn, who had . The trip lasted a total of 29 days, 11 hours, and 59 minutes. Her autobiography Jerrie Cobb: Solo Pilot details her extraordinary life. Copying. Of the Mercury 7 astronauts, John Glenn had the most flight experience at a total of 5,100 hours. But Cobb had no interest in working as a secretary, though she did want to become an astronaut. NASA didnt send Jerrie Cobb to space, but they did put a female chimpanzee into orbit. None of the Mercury 13 ever reached space, despite Cobbs testimony in 1962 before a Congressional panel. And see the stars and galaxies in their true brilliance, without the filter of our atmosphere. After graduating from Oklahoma City's Classen High School, she spent one year at the Oklahoma College for Women in Chickasha, Oklahoma (now the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma). Jerrie Cobb succeeded in having House subcommittee hearings held in the summer of 1962, investigating whether NASA was discriminating on the basis of sex, but the results were not what she hoped. The papers of Jerrie Cobb document Cobb's professional life, highlighting her career as a pilot and her participation in Mercury 13, including her attempts to be the first woman in space, the public impact of her career, and her humanitarian work flying medicine and food to remote parts of the Amazon. In an effort to beat the Soviets to the moon, NASA began training astronauts. Jerrie Cobb prepares to operate the Multi-Axis Space Test Inertia Facility (MASTIF) at the Lewis Research Centre in Ohio in 1960. 1979 Bishop Wright Air Industry Award for her "humanitarian contributions to modern aviation". Jerrie Cobb passed a series of tests meant for Navy pilots and astronauts. Facing sex discrimination and the return of many qualified male pilots after World War II, she took on less-sought-after flying jobs, such as patrolling pipelines and crop dusting. In 1978, the first year NASA admitted women into its program, Sally Ride broke that barrier. In 1955, Cobb was hired as a pilot and manager for Aero Design and Engineering Company based in Oklahoma, which made the Aero Commander aircraft. They attended hearings chaired by Representative Victor Anfuso and testified on behalf of the women. Additionally, there is a slide show created by the Jerrie Cobb Foundation possibly for promotional or fundraising purposes: "Amazonas. Series is arranged chronologically.Series III, AUDIOVISUAL, 1930s-2012 (#Vt-260.1-Vt-260.9, DVD-147.1), includes VHS, Betacam SP, and one DVD. NASA's first female astronaut candidate, pilot Jerrie Cobb, has died. In many of the segments Cobb discusses her desire to fly into space and the current efforts by others to secure her ability to do so. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google, This website and its associated newspaper are members of Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). Original titles, which were taken from the binders or from the original container list provided by the donor, have been retained when possible and are in quotes. Closed Captioning and Described Video is available for many CBC shows offered on CBC Gem. She flew her fathers open cockpit Waco biplane at age 12 and got her private pilots licence four years later. America's first female astronaut candidate, pilot Jerrie Cobb, who pushed for equality in space but never reached its heights, has died. Cobb died in Florida at age. Those hearings found no sympathetic ear among the Mercury Seven; John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, said, "The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order." The bulk of the materials consists of television interviews and profiles of Cobb as well as other Mercury 13 pilots when they achieved public attention around the time of John Glenn's return to space on the Shuttle Discovery mission in 1998. Members of the FLATs, also known as the "Mercury 13," attend a shuttle launch in this photograph from 1995. Jerrie Cobb, who began flying when she was so small she had to sit on pillows to see . Aviation pioneer Geraldyn M. "Jerrie" Cobb entered the world on March 5, 1931, in Norman, Oklahoma. She was also part of the "Mercury 13", a group of women who underwent some of the same physiological screening tests as the original Mercury Seven astronauts as part of a private, non-NASA program. San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive/Wikimedia CommonsJerrie Cobb receiving a pilots award. . "She should have gone to space, but turned her life into one of service with grace," tweeted Ellen Stofan, director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum and a former NASA scientist. [7], In November 1960, following multiple crashes of the Lockheed L-188 Electra, American Airlines' marketing department identified that the aircraft's reputation was poor among women, impacting passenger bookings. Ten of the 12 were men, and all but one of those a war veteran. According to Ruth Lummis of the Jerrie Cobb Foundation who helped coordinate the donation of Cobb's papers to the Schlesinger Library, the binders were compiled by friends and volunteers over the years and their dates and contents overlap. All the women who participated in the program, known as First Lady Astronaut Trainees, were skilled pilots. Visiting the space center as invited guests of STS-63 pilot Eileen Collins, the first female shuttle pilot and later the first female shuttle commander, are (from left): Gene Nora Jessen, Wally Funk, Jerrie Cobb, Jerri Truhill, Sarah Rutley, Myrtle Cagle and Bernice Steadman. "Its a really important, inspiring story," Sardelli says. During her historic flight, she traveled 23,103 miles in just under 30 days. Died: 18 March 2019 in Florida, United States, aged 88. Jerri Cobb is 86. At the time, Cobb had flown 64 types of propeller aircraft, but had made only one flight, in the back seat, of a jet fighter. [22] Many aviators and astronauts of the time believed this was a failed chance for NASA to right a wrong they had made years before. She was a semi-professional softball player for the Oklahoma City Queens, where she saved enough money to buy a World War II surplus Fairchild PT23. [25], Sonya Walger portrays the character Molly Cobb, based on Jerrie Cobb, in the 2019 alternate history TV series For All Mankind, in which Cobb becomes the first American woman in space. Former Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova and U.S. astronaut Cady Coleman (right), together before Coleman's 2010 launch to space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan. NASA didn't fly a woman in space Sally Ride until 1983. The piece introduced Jerrie Cobb to the nation as a prospective space pilot and praised her as someone who complained less than the Mercury men had. For reference, the Mercury men were the seven original American astronauts. Why did it take us so long? In a contraption dubbed the Vomit Comet, she was spun head over heels and shaken side to side. But when pilot Jerrie Cobb petitioned for the space agency to accept female astronaut trainees like her, she was shut down. Deeply disappointed, Cobb abandoned her dream of becoming an astronaut and devoted the rest of her life to flying supplies and medicine to remote areas of the Amazon, instead. She served as a test pilot for Aero Commander in Bethany, Oklahoma, early in her career. The question of whether women could endure the physical rigors of spaceflight had been debated in popular culture for years, but Cobbs persistent lobbying inspired the House subcommittee hearings that investigated whether NASA was discriminating on the basis of sex. 2000 Inducted into "Women in Aviation International Pioneer Hall of Fame".