She performed better than many of her male peers, but in the early 1960s NASA decided against sending women into space.
By Harrison Smith Harrison Smith Obituary writer Email Bio Follow April 22 at 6:55 PM By all metrics, there was no doubt that Jerrie Cobb had the right stuff, that luminous combination of talent, experience, bravery and composure that distinguishes an astronaut from an earthbound pilot.
Dubbed an “astronautrix” and “astronette” by publications such as Life magazine, which noted the size of her bust alongside the breadth of her aviation résumé, she lobbied for NASA to launch women into space, testifying at a 1962 congressional hearing and meeting with Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The daughter of an Army lieutenant colonel, Ms. Cobb started flying at 12, sitting on a stack of pillows and using blocks to reach the rudder pedals of her father’s open-cockpit Waco biplane. She went on to dust crops, deliver surplus military planes around the world, and work at the Oklahoma-based Aero Design and Engineering Co. in the 1950s, as one of the few female executives in aviation.
In Lovelace’s view, women were to function as an essential part of such space stations, working as secretaries or nurses. To determine whether they would be able to survive in space, he invited Ms. Cobb, then 28, to perform the same tests he had used on the Mercury astronaut candidates. Ms. Cobb became the country’s most prominent supporter of female astronauts, seeking to overturn a NASA provision that required all astronaut candidates to have experience flying military jets — an opportunity that was closed to women.
Ms. Cobb had by then established herself as a missionary and humanitarian force in South America, where she had once delivered military planes to Peru and spent days in an Ecuadoran prison, accused of being a spy for Peru. Flying solo with the aid of hand-drawn maps, she was honored by the governments of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
Geraldyn Menor Cobb was born in Norman, Okla., on March 5, 1931, and the family moved frequently among military bases, settling in Oklahoma City.
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