“All right, Mrs. York. I want you to keep your eyes open for this procedure. Tell me about how you met your husband, and be sure to keep talking for the next five minutes.” Behind me, metal clanked against metal. “No matter what, keep talking and keep your eyes open.”
“All right … I met Nathaniel three times before we started seeing each other—” Something cold brushed my ear. “The first time was at Stanford. I was assigned to tutor his roommate in—ohmygod what—”
Freezing liquid filled my right ear, and my equilibrium was suddenly gone. The room spun around me in frantic circles. I clenched the seat of the chair with both hands. Eyes open. Keep talking.
“Tutor … I was assigned to tutor his roommate in math. Differential equations. But the fellow wasn’t always there when I came and … and…”
This was worse than being in a tailspin. There, at least, you could do something to pull out of the spin.
“… and so Nathaniel and I would talk. A little. About rockets, mostly. The next semester, his roommate had a different roommate.” God, I was barely making any sense. “I didn’t see him—Nathaniel. I didn’t see Nathaniel again until the war. I was a WASP. I ferried some planes and did some training in New Mexico. He was there. He remembered me. I was less shy. We talked about rockets again.”
I couldn’t get my eyes to focus. Even keeping them open took effort as the room whipped around me.
“The third time was Langley, at NACA. I was visiting with my father—I mean, my father took me with him to visit NACA. Nathaniel was there. We talked about rockets. And he asked me a question about trajectories. I answered…”
The edges of the chair dug into my fingers as I fought to stay in my seat. Had other women fallen out? Had the men?
“I answered and he offered me a job. He shouldn’t have—I mean. Computers weren’t his department. Engineer. He was the lead engineer.”
They’d done this to Stetson Parker. Whatever she’d stuck in my ear was something that had happened to Stetson Parker. The one thing I knew for certain about the test ing was that we were being subjected to the exact same tests as the men. If he could survive this, so could I.
“He later said that he had wanted me for the engineering department, but then he couldn’t have asked me out.”
The doorknob had a beam of light shining on it. I fixed my gaze on that and tried to let the room swing around that point. It helped. A little.
“It never occurred to me that a woman could be an engineer, and the computer department was all women, so that seemed like a natural fit. I was there for two months when he asked me to go to the Christmas party with him. I told him I was Jewish. It turned out that he was too, but it was the company party, so—”
Mrs. Rhode stepped in front of me and clicked a stopwatch. “Very good, Mrs. York. Four minutes, thirty-eight seconds. That’s quite good. You may close your eyes now.”
The darkness was a welcome relief. The room still spun, but not as badly.
“What was that?”
“Super-chilled water to freeze your inner ear. It’s an equilibrium test to see how well you can function when unbalanced. We look to see when your eyes stop rolling as a sign that you’ve gained a measure of control.”
“And I could only focus after four minutes and thirty-eight seconds?” In a plane, it would have killed me if it had taken me that long to pull it together.
“Yes, but you were able to function the entire time. You may put your shirt on, but we’ll leave the heart monitors in place for the next test.” Something cloth, presumably my shirt, landed in my lap. “And thank you for not vomiting.”
The rest of the day followed similar baffling and unpleasant lines.
There was a table that they strapped you to, turned you upside down for five minutes, and then jerked it upright to see if you’d faint from the sudden change in orientation. A treadmill that rose at a steady rate as you ran to simulate a run up a mountain.
There were other examinations, some of them less dignified than a trip to the gynecologist, which is saying something.
When I was sweaty, tired, and annoyed, they gave me written tests about orbital mechanics. With each round, there were fewer and fewer of us. Some hadn’t been able to get through a crucial part of the testing—I nearly didn’t make it through the run “uphill”—and other women changed their minds. Those of us who stayed, though, had an odd mix of camaraderie and fierce competitiveness. We were, after all, pilots.
THIRTY
34 WOMEN TOOK ASTRONAUT TESTS
KANSAS CITY, KS, May 16, 1957—(AP)—Thirty-four women were chosen to undergo a preliminary testing program to be Lunar Astronauts. All 34 are airplane pilots and their ages range from 23 to 38. These beauties range from blond to brunette and are among the best feminine specimens on the planet.
By day four, there were just twenty-one of us left. Betty and Nicole were still in the running, as was Sabiha. Sometimes we were in the same testing room, other times it was a solo ordeal like the inner ear test.
After I endured the joys of having a metal cup pressed against my eyeball to test for glaucoma, I walked into an interview room. Stetson Parker sat at a table, flanked on one side by Benkoski and the other by Director Clemons.
“Bloody hell.” Clemons threw his pen down on the table. “We don’t really need to interview her, do we?”
Thank God I was already sweaty from the treadmill earlier, because it masked the cold sweat that broke out of every pore. “I know that I’ve tried your patience, but—”
Clemons waved his hand and I stopped talking out of habit. He picked up his pen again and aimed it at me. “You misunderstand. We are supposed to see if the candidates have the drive an astronaut needs. That is hardly a question with you.”
“Oh.” I looked back at the door. “Should I … should I send in the next person?”
“No…” Parker leaned back in his chair. “I think we should do this right, so no one can accuse us of favoritism later. Why don’t you sit down, Mrs. York, and tell us why you want to be an astronaut.”
Favoritism. Ha. But I sat down in the chair facing the men and rested my hands on my knees with my ankles crossed, the way Mama had taught me. Don’t ask me why I wanted to sit like a lady when I was wearing rumpled pants and a sweat-dampened shirt. It might just have been the only armor I owned.
For once, I was glad for all the interviews that I had done, because this was a question that I had answered over and again. “Why do I want to be an astronaut? Because I believe that women have a necessary role in establishing colonies on other planets. If we have—”
“I’m not interested in your speeches.” Parker sat upright with a thump. “If I wanted those, I could read a magazine.”
“Colonel Parker!” Clemons glared at him. “This is not how we treat candidates.”
“We all know why she thinks women should go into space.” He turned to face me again. “I want to know why you, specifically you, want to be an astronaut. And why you want to do that now, at this stage of the program.”
I stared at him. I didn’t have an answer. Or at least not one that I could articulate. I just wanted to, in the same way I wanted to fly. I discarded the truth—which was that I didn’t really know—and instead reached for answers like the ones that I’d seen the astronauts give in interviews. “I feel that it’s my duty to—”
“To serve your country … That’s the answer someone gives to the press corps.” Parker shook his head. Neither of the other two men stepped in this time.