After a long Air Force career and time spent as a test pilot for NASA and Boeing, Kelly Latimer is now a test pilot for Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit.
Kelly Latimer flies Cosmic Girl, a modified Boeing 747 plane that is set to launch rockets from beneath its wing, as well as the massive carrier aircraft White Knight Two that drops the Virgin Galactic tourist spaceship.
“This is the late ’70s, early ’80s, the academies just got opened to women,” Latimer said. “The first girls were just going through when I was applying … and in my mind, I’m like, ‘It’s fine, I’ve got the women there now. It’s going to be good. I can do it. It’s not a problem.’ But I just knew my parents would not see it that same way.
Several years later, while she was deployed to Afghanistan, she applied again and was chosen for an interview. However, this time, Latimer didn’t pass the physical exam because of a high antibody reading in her blood — a result “you wouldn’t know unless you took the astronaut physical,” she said. She said she remembered thinking at the time that after all her time and effort, “the dream is dead.
“I was surprised at just how serious and how much effort was going into moving forward,” she said. “And I was like, ‘This is the real deal. These guys are really going to do this. And I want in.’ ”
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