Mercury 13 Women Astronauts

[Homer J Simpson]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_13

[Rick Law]

While on the topic of lady astronauts.  The new class of astronauts has been chosen.  12 out of 18,300 applicants.

I read this in a magazine article (Stars and Strips website, June 8 2017) about this lady, LT Kayla Barron.  I was so impressed with her resume that I took notes thinking it could be used to inspire my own kid.

2010 United States Naval Academy (USNA) graduate (System Eng Major)
        4th year senior project was low-power neutron detector
        4.0 cumulative GPA
        1st in class of 1051 students

2011 Master Degree, Nuclear Eng. Cambridge Univ.
         (attended with scholarship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)

After Cambridge, she begun training as submarine officer, and assigned to submarine service.  She had wanted to be Naval Aviator, but cannot meet eye sight requirement.  So she choose the silent service.

2013  Married, husband is a Harvard grad and Army Special Forces Captain

2015  Returned to USNA as "Flag Aide to the Superintendent"

2017  En-route to become the 54th astronaut from UNSA.

Go Navy!

[EEVblog]

While on the topic of lady astronauts.  The new class of astronauts has been chosen.  12 out of 18,300 applicants.

I read this in a magazine article (Stars and Strips website, June 8 2017) about this lady, LT Kayla Barron.  I was so impressed with her resume that I took notes thinking it could be used to inspire my own kid.

2010 United States Naval Academy (USNA) graduate (System Eng Major)
        4th year senior project was low-power neutron detector
        4.0 cumulative GPA
        1st in class of 1051 students
2011 Master Degree, Nuclear Eng. Cambridge Univ.
         (attended with scholarship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)
After Cambridge, she begun training as submarine officer, and assigned to submarine service.  She had wanted to be Naval Aviator, but cannot meet eye sight requirement.  So she choose the silent service.
2013  Married, husband is a Harvard grad and Army Special Forces Captain
2015  Returned to USNA as "Flag Aide to the Superintendent"
2017  En-route to become the 54th astronaut from UNSA.

Not bad, but if the goal is to become and astronaut then there are always better options.
Having flying experience and/or aeronautics degree of some description would likely be a better bet.
Masters or Phd in something like orbital mechanics or something aviation or space related?
Or a post-grad degree in a related science field like astrobiology perhaps.
I believe teaching experience is well regarded as well.
Maybe donating your time to one of those year long Mars habitat things as well to show physiological aptitude.
The submariner thing probably goes both ways, it might shows ability to be locked in a steel tube with others, but the stories I've heard about submariners :->
I wonder if many submariners are ever ended up astronaughts?

Any way you do it, I suspect a lot of it comes down to luck and probably small things you do or say in the interviews or some evaluator didn't like you for *insert reason here* etc.
Out of those 18,300 applicants there were probably thousands that were more then qualified and suitable.

[Kjelt]

and be able to read Russian, on the Soyuz capsule everything is in Russian and this was one of the hardest parts of the astronaut training according to our dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers.

[EEVblog]

and be able to read Russian, on the Soyuz capsule everything is in Russian and this was one of the hardest parts of the astronaut training according to our dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers.

Indeed!
Russian & Chinese would be the combination you want.

[Electro Detective]

Italian and Greek if you don't want to suffer malnutrition effects 

[cdev]

>"Italian and Greek if you don't want to suffer malnutrition effects "

Could you elaborate?

[CJay]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_13

Magnificent bunch of ladies, there was a rather good docudrama on BBC Radio 4 about them, it's not available at the moment but if it interests you it's worth waiting for it to come round again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04pss4s

Wally Funk is an extraordinary character and has lead an amazing life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Funk

[German_EE]

One other thing, women always make better astronauts because (generally) they are shorter. This means that a) they are better at fitting into small spaces like a Mercury capsule and b) they are better under a high g load. The ideal astronaut and/or fighter pilot is someone who is short and stocky.

[Rick Law]

While on the topic of lady astronauts.  The new class of astronauts has been chosen.  12 out of 18,300 applicants.

I read this in a magazine article (Stars and Strips website, June 8 2017) about this lady, LT Kayla Barron.  I was so impressed with her resume that I took notes thinking it could be used to inspire my own kid.

2010 United States Naval Academy (USNA) graduate (System Eng Major)
        4th year senior project was low-power neutron detector
        4.0 cumulative GPA
        1st in class of 1051 students
2011 Master Degree, Nuclear Eng. Cambridge Univ.
         (attended with scholarship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)
After Cambridge, she begun training as submarine officer, and assigned to submarine service.  She had wanted to be Naval Aviator, but cannot meet eye sight requirement.  So she choose the silent service.
2013  Married, husband is a Harvard grad and Army Special Forces Captain
2015  Returned to USNA as "Flag Aide to the Superintendent"
2017  En-route to become the 54th astronaut from UNSA.

Not bad, but if the goal is to become and astronaut then there are always better options.
Having flying experience and/or aeronautics degree of some description would likely be a better bet.
Masters or Phd in something like orbital mechanics or something aviation or space related?
Or a post-grad degree in a related science field like astrobiology perhaps.
I believe teaching experience is well regarded as well.
Maybe donating your time to one of those year long Mars habitat things as well to show physiological aptitude.
The submariner thing probably goes both ways, it might shows ability to be locked in a steel tube with others, but the stories I've heard about submariners :->
I wonder if many submariners are ever ended up astronaughts?

Any way you do it, I suspect a lot of it comes down to luck and probably small things you do or say in the interviews or some evaluator didn't like you for *insert reason here* etc.
Out of those 18,300 applicants there were probably thousands that were more then qualified and suitable.

re: "...stories I've heard about submariners : I wonder if many submariners are ever ended up astronaughts?"

This submariner is certainly enroute to become one.  Thinking about it, submariners have an advantage - they are already trained for close-quarters living.  So, something like a space station would be easy  - perhaps even roomy and less "enclosed" since subs would not have a window.

re: "...Any way you do it, I suspect a lot of it comes down to luck..."

Yeah...  Sometimes, it is amazing how the strange little turns in life leads to or doors those little turns may open/close.  But as the saying goes, "Luck favors the well prepared."

I think coming out of USNA, she has shown she can perform under pressure and do so well - 4.0GPA at the kind of environment USNA provides is hard.  I saw the National Geographics show on "Surviving West Point" and USNA has a lot of similarities with West Point (USMA).  Those kids are purposely overloaded, stressed, and pushed beyond the limit.  To get 4.0 GPA under that environment, hats off to her.

At the West Point website, they have suggestion on what Kids should do when they are in middle school!  I know two USNA graduates, both of them say just the applying process is like a life-long process.

No wonder, salary.com life-earning potential has USMA (West Point) at #6, USNA at #7, and USAFA (Air Force) #8 beating out a lot of bigger name colleges.

Now, with her husband being US Army...  I wonder if there is going to be a shoot-out one of these days during Army Navy (football) Game.  This time, I will call it Army Navy game since they won the last round...

Go Navy, lets kick (or run) the daylight out of them next game.

[CopperCone]

Probobly because it was unsafe and people worried about families, kids..

[Kjelt]

BTW for those of you interested in the story of female workers in NASA:
last year a hollywood movie was made about the role of female mathematicians working for NASA, they were called the human calculators since computers were not or rarely available.
Great movie showing the stereotyping all male engineers with pens in their pocket thinking the woman are secretaries while they actually are smarter then they are 
And all the artificial rules to keep women from becoming an engineer etc, this is around the first space program in the fifties.


Hidden Figures
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4846340/

[Rick Law]

BTW for those of you interested in the story of female workers in NASA:
last year a hollywood movie was made about the role of female mathematicians working for NASA, they were called the human calculators since computers were not or rarely available.
Great movie showing the stereotyping all male engineers with pens in their pocket thinking the woman are secretaries while they actually are smarter then they are 
And all the artificial rules to keep women from becoming an engineer etc, this is around the first space program in the fifties.


Hidden Figures
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4846340/

I don't know to what extend the movie is real or fiction.  Female "calculators" far predated NASA - way back to WW II.

Female "calculators" were pivotal during WW II.   They calculated trajectories, bomb-drop setting tables, etc.  Besides their contribution to war effort, they made critical contributions to the world of electronic computing.  Without them, invention of electronic computers would have been a much harder tasks.

These ladies got into the game early, stayed in the game, and really help drove computing forward.  The documentary also shown the Rosie who went on to become the first electronic computer programmer.

Highly recommended - Top Secret Rosies: The Female "Computers" of WWII, a documentary made in 2010 - without the Hollywood spin on history and with real participants instead of actors.

This is Wiki's summary of it:
_{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Secret_Rosies:_The_Female_%22Computers%22_of_WWII}

(If this reply seem to constantly change at first...  I had to re-edited umpteen times because my damn PC kept rebooting itself during the edit)