Funk had been waiting for this opportunity for six decades.
would excel in the program.
As a result, the selection requirements were changed.
It was decided that all astronauts must be graduates of military jet test pilot schools and have engineering degrees.
The selection requirements automatically disqualified women from applying, as women were barred from military flight training.
Jerrie Cobb poses next to a Mercury spaceship capsule.
All of the women who took part in the training exercised were skilled airplane pilots with commercial ratings.
Most of them were recruited through the Ninety-Nines, a women pilot’s organization.
Others heard about the testing through friends or newspaper articles and volunteered.
Accomplished pilot Geraldyn “Jerrie” Cobb was the first test candidate.
An undated photograph of aviator Wally Funk.
The women braved them all, and some even performed better than their male counterparts.
The final phase consisted of flight simulations, which could only be conducted using military equipment and jet aircraft.
By then the number of qualifying women were down to thirteen.
Tests were conducted alone or in pairs.
She even wrote to President John Kennedy and visited Vice President Lyndon Johnson.
Jerrie Cobb is seen testing in 1960 in NASA’s Multiple Axis Space Test Inertia Facility.
