Apologies for a couple errors in framing, if you would like to read more into it here is some more sources: 1.https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/advan.00034.2009 2.https://www.nasa.gov/history/lovelaces-woman-in-space-program/ 3.https://daily.jstor.org/how-the-mercury-13-fought-to-get-women-in-space/ 4.https://doi.org/10.1096/fasebj.21.5.A444-a In 1961, while America celebrated its first astronauts, something else was happening in secret. A group of thirteen women were being put through the most gruelling physical and psychological testing ever designed for human spaceflight. The same tests. The same standards. The same doctor who had certified the Mercury Seven as fit for space. They were not told they would get to go. They were told nothing was promised. They showed up anyway. All thirteen passed. Multiple women outperformed male candidates on endurance, isolation tolerance and cardiovascular response. Wally Funk, a 21-year-old aviator from New Mexico, outscored John Glenn on several evaluations. Rhea Woltman sat alone in a sensory deprivation tank in total silence and darkness for over ten hours. The researchers stopped the test. She had not asked to stop. NASA cancelled the programme before Phase 3 could be completed. No announcement was made. The women received letters and were told not to discuss it publicly. When they fought back and brought their case to Congress in 1962, they were granted a hearing. John Glenn, America's most celebrated astronaut, testified against them. The committee agreed with him. The door was closed. The rule that officially blocked them was not about ability. NASA had introduced a requirement that all candidates must hold active military jet test pilot status. Women were legally prohibited from serving in that role. It was a bureaucratic wall built at exactly the right height to make sure none of them could ever clear it. They scattered. Some continued flying commercially. Some became instructors. Some never spoke about it publicly for decades. Wally Funk waited sixty years. In July 2021, at the age of 82, she boarded Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin New Shepard rocket and flew to space. She became the oldest person in history to do so. She was more qualified than the men who went ahead of her in 1961. The only variable that changed her outcome was the decade she was born into. Their names were Jerrie Cobb, Wally Funk, Irene Leverton, Myrtle Cagle, Janey Hart, Gene Nora Jessen, Jerri Sloan, Rhea Hurrle, Sarah Gorelick, Bernice Steadman, Jan Dietrich, Marion Dietrich, and Rhea Woltman. #space #spacehistory #NASA #hiddenfigures #mercury13 - @_parallaxis