Episode 50: Project Gemini, Part II

 

Have you ever heard of the Mercury 13, the group of 13 women who passed the same initial tests their male counterparts, the Mercury 7, took to become astronauts? Two of them even passed the second adn third phases of testing but because it was an unofficial test program and not authorized by NASA, the US Navy withdrew their support - and more importantly their equipment - for the tests. Jerrie Cobb (above) performed in the top 2 percentile of tests of astronauts of both genders. She was also already such a renounded pilot that when Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, met Cobb, Tereshkova told the American that she was her hero and also that all the women Cosmonauts thought Cobb would be the first woman in space.

In 1995, a woman was assigned to pilot a space shuttle for the first time and the seven surviving members of the Mercury 13 (or as they sometimes called themselves, the FLATS [First Lady Astronaut Trainees]) were invited to Florida to see the historic launch. From left to right they are: Gene Nora Jessen, Wally Funk, Jerrie Cobb, Jerri Truhill, Sarah Ratley, Myrtle Cagle, and Bernie Steadman).

Jerrie Cobb never made it to space, but Jerry Funk, the youngest of the Mercury 13 and the only other woman to get the chance to talk all three phases of the Mercury astronaut candiates test get make it to space. In 2021, she flew on the the first Blue Origin commerical space flight. t 82-years-old, she set the record for the oldest person to go to space, passing the mark set by (spoiler!) 77-year-old John Glenn during his shuttle mission. Her record was broken later that year by 90-year-old William Shattner.

In the mid-1960s, the American space program was preparing the launch the first multi-crew capsule into space, the two person Gemini capsule. When the Soviets caught wind of this the decided to beat them to the punch by engineering a way to cram three cosmonauts inside a modified Vostok capsule called Voshkod 1. This is often considered the riskiest space mission because the spaceship was so cramped, the crew flew in track suits instead of pressurized space suits. They survived though and the Soviets achieved another record first for thier space program.

The Soviets also launched Voshkod 2 while the Americans were still testing Gemini capsules. This second Voshkod mission saw the first spacewalk by a human and answered the quiestion once and for all if humans, with the proper equipment, could work in open space. The spacewalk was televised live for the entire world to see... at least until things got a little hairry and the live transmission was cut off. 

(CCCP Spacewalk still courtesy of https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_9035/index.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46303679)