>If you want to be really accurate, the women actually participated in a private test that replicated the NASA training program, so NASA had nothing to do with

>If you want to be really accurate, the women actually participated in a private test that replicated the NASA training program, so NASA had nothing to do with it. Correct, except the word "training". The Mercury 13 took physiological tests that replicated NASA evaluations of prospective astronaut candidates, nothing more. The Mercury 7 didn't go through a "training program" after selection; such didn't formally start until the shuttle era. >But the entire point of that private program was the show NASA "hey look women can do this too!". And that's kind of the point. >That they were only being denied because of their gender. My point is that the rules weren't put there to exclude women but to screen the applicant pool to make easier identifying those that NASA sincerely thought would be the best candidates. By proactively choosing from active-duty military pilots, for example, the Mercury Seven evaluation board missed out on Neil Armstrong (a civilian). By screening for only those applicants with fighter pilot experience, the Group 2 evaluators would have missed out on Mercury Seven's Scott Carpenter, who flew multiengine planes. By excluding those with a minimum amount of flight hours, Group 3 missed out on Don Lind (physics PhD and Navy fighter vet who didn't meet the minimum). Etc., etc. Let me repeat: Most men who passed the tests the Mercury 7 and Mercury 13 passed weren't chosen to become astronauts, either. Taken literally, "Mercury 13" would imply that twice as many qualified women astronauts existed in 1959 as men. That's in and of itself ridiculous. To say that the only thing keeping the Mercury 13 from flying into space was an arbitrary NASA decision, and nothing else, is simply not true.