PBS documentary: Women In Space

[qprmeteor]

As part of PBS's MAKERS series, the latest episode looks at the role of women in the US space program:

http://www.makers.com/documentary/womeninspace

(No geoblocking, I watched it from the UK)

It features interviews with Eileen Collins, Peggy Whitson, Ellen Ochoa, Rhea Seddon, Anna Fisher, Shannon Lucid, Mae Jameson, Kathy Sullivan and Cady Coleman, along with Wally Funk from the Lovelace group.

[Blackstar]

I had dinner with one of those women last night and talked a bit about the subject. She said that when she was in the military going through flight training and things like that she got a lot of opposition from the men. When she arrived at NASA, she was welcomed as a member of the team. No sexism at all. She thought that NASA was far ahead of the military in how it treated women. We discussed why that was and part of it was that women had been flying on shuttle for several years, and also that a woman had died on Challenger (yes, I know that there were two women on Challenger, but we were discussing the astronaut corps). The military still took a long time to catch up.

[Blackstar]

http://thespacereview.com/article/2616/1

Women of Space
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, October 13, 2014

This Tuesday, October 14, PBS is airing the third episode of the second season of its “Makers” series, called “Women in Space.” Rather surprisingly, this is the first comprehensive documentary on this subject and comes at a time when, at least for Americans, the fact that there are women astronauts has long ceased to be notable. Because that is the case, in many ways it is even more important to remind people that it took a lot of effort and struggle and setbacks to reach this point.

The title might be bland, but the documentary is fascinating. It covers the subject primarily chronologically, from the original 1950s proposals to fly women in space because they were lighter and smaller than men, up to an interview with a young engineer currently working on NASA’s Orion spacecraft who wants to someday be an astronaut. Along the way it touches on a lot of important issues, such as the Lovelace Clinic tests that demonstrated that women could survive all the rigorous medical torture that NASA was then throwing at its male astronauts.

It also discusses the early 1960s congressional hearings about women astronauts, Lyndon Johnson’s hand-written statement “Lets stop this now!” when the issue reached his desk, the first woman in Mission Control, and how NASA got actress Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek’s Uhura, to recruit women and minorities into the astronaut corps in the 1970s. Of course there are numerous interviews with the first NASA female astronauts and some discussion of their most famous member, Sally Ride, who died before this documentary was produced. The documentary also features the first female Space Shuttle pilot and later commander, Eileen Collins, as well as the first female International Space Station commander, Peggy Whitson.

[Targeteer]

The episode is re-airing at 3am eastern time Friday on my local PBS channel.  I looked for the episode earlier this week but didn't know the title was "Makers" till I saw this thread so thanks for the heads up 

[Hog]

I just finished watching this episode.

I remember when our first female combat casualty occured, Capt. Nichola Goddard in 2006. It was all over the NEWS at the time. I remember a few females in my Basic training platoon, and even some on our Special Operations Forces teams, though US SOF teams currently exclude females.
IMO f someone can do a job, they should be allowed to do so. So much has been accomplished, but there is much left to do.


Canadian Women in Space
1) Dr. Roberta Bondar
2) Capt. Julie Payette

Canada no longer has any active female Astronauts in its Corps as of July 2013.

[catdlr]

Here is the PBS site to stream it on your own time:  http://video.pbs.org/video/2365346239/