Former presidential candidate and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has frequently repeated a tale a couple of time in her adolescence when she wrote a letter to NASA expressing a dream of changing into an astronaut someday. NASA answered, she claimed, explaining they didn’t have any ladies astronauts. Clinton has repeated this again and again through the years, with the main points recounted in large part the similar in every case.
In a single speech, honoring Amelia Earhart in 2012, she mentioned:
Now a few of you could know that once I used to be somewhat woman rising up in Illinois, I used to be eager about a wide variety of news about ladies. And my mom … was once an actual fan of Amelia Earhart’s, and in reality instructed me about Amelia Earhart. After which after we made up our minds, below President Kennedy’s management, that our country was once going to visit the moon and we have been going to have an astronaut program, I sought after to be an astronaut. So when I used to be about 13, I wrote to NASA and requested what I had to do to check out to be an astronaut. And naturally, there were not any ladies astronauts, and NASA wrote me again and mentioned there would now not be any ladies astronauts. And I used to be simply crestfallen. However then I spotted I could not see really well, and I wasn’t all that athletic, so most certainly – (laughter) — I would not be the primary lady astronaut anyway.
The Washington Submit investigated this tale in 2015, attaining out to NASA and the Clinton marketing campaign. Neither may just reproduce the correspondence that Clinton described, for the reason that the interplay happened round part a century in the past.
However NASA did argue that such an interplay most likely did happen, they usually had no explanation why to doubt Clinton’s tale. Company officers mentioned the sort of reaction was once in step with their coverage on the time.
“In 1962, the necessities for being an astronaut incorporated being an army check pilot with a point in engineering,” spokesperson Lauren Worley mentioned. “Greater than 50 years later, NASA’s astronaut corps displays our country’s variety.”
NASA didn’t have a ladies’s astronaut program then. The primary American lady who went to area was once Sally Journey in 1983, whilst Susan Helms was once the primary lady staff member aboard the gap station in 2001. The Washington Submit did percentage an excerpt from NASA’s analysis a couple of failed personal screening for ladies astronauts within the Sixties:
Dr. Randy Lovelace have been working (in 1960/61) a non-public screening program for possible ladies astronauts that was once swiftly terminated in September 1961. That fall, there have been many questions raised about why this system have been ended — with many palms within the press and on Capitol Hill pointing at NASA. In the summertime of 1962 there have been congressional hearings at the subject.
What had in reality came about in September 1961 is that Dr. Lovelace had attempted to run additional assessments on his ladies astronaut aspirants at Pensacola Naval Air Station. (It will have to be famous that lots of the ladies were not utterly conscious the Dr. Lovelace had no legit backing for this effort.) Prior to committing assets to those assessments the U.S. Military requested NASA if this was once an legit program. Shocked NASA officers mentioned no, and the Military refused to let Dr. Lovelace run the assessments at Pensacola.
In discussions between NASA Deputy Administrator Hugh Dryden and U.S. Military officers that fall, Dryden’s place was once that “NASA does now not at the moment have a demand for the sort of program” however that it will examine the chance “at a while one day.” This was once the legit coverage on ladies astronauts and NASA reaction letters to ladies right through the Sixties replicate this viewpoint.
The Washington Submit reviewed archived paperwork from that point and located a lot of equivalent responses from NASA that gradually inspired the ladies writing to them, whilst keeping up their coverage of now not making plans to coach feminine astronauts. One instance was once a letter present in Journey’s assortment. It was once despatched to Journey via a girl named Linda Halpern who had written to NASA in 1962, and she or he gained a reaction from the company that mentioned: “whilst many ladies are hired in different capacities within the area program — a few of them in extraordinarily vital clinical posts — we haven’t any provide plans to make use of ladies on area flights as a result of the stage of clinical and flight coaching, and the bodily traits, that are required.”
A NASA spokesperson answered to our questions with the next commentary: “Sadly, as a result of such a lot of letters of this sort have been gained, we wouldn’t have a file of a letter to or from Mrs. Clinton within the Sixties, however we haven’t any explanation why to doubt her account.”
NASA additionally shared with us, correspondence between former astronaut Marsha Ivins and the gap company from 1970, written when Ivins was once in school:
In brief, despite the fact that there’s a number of circumstantial proof appearing it’s most likely that NASA despatched Clinton the sort of reaction, there is not any means to make sure the real correspondence a long time later.
