Thursday, March 08, 2012

One Giant Leap for Hamkind.

Girls are Geeks too and heres the proof! Its sound hilarious but in 1961 NASA launched a successful astronaut 150 miles into the heavens and he was a monkey! Apparently Ham was smart enough to test out the original Mecury craft launched into earth's sub orbital atmosphere helping us humans discover whether living creatures could survive the rigours of interstellar flight. LOL, okay so I'm exaggerating a little bit but Ham was congratulated by NASA after his successful flight on January 31st 1961.



Two years later thirteen female pilots sign up for Astronaut training with high hopes of entering NASA's Mecury Program. The female geeks are put through NASA's hoops and pass the same demanding physical, intellectual and psychological tests as Mecury's seven male astronauts and trailblazer Ham. The kicker for the Mecury 13 is the year, 1963. Gender discrimination probably prevented female acceptance into NASA's space flight program but who knows why America just wasn't really ready?

How times have changed! On 18th June 1983 Sally Ride became the first American woman to enter space except Russia's was way ahead of us at warp factor 9. Isn't it interesting Mother Russia had enough faith in their girl geeks to become the first country launching the first woman into space with Valentina Tereshkova in 1963!

Live Long and Prosper, Trekkies and Trekkers.

6 comments:

L.G. Keltner said...

Ah, great stuff. Growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut. Unfortunately my eyesight isn't good enough, so I go on space adventures with science fiction instead.

Thanks for sharing such great history.

Maurice Mitchell said...

Space monkey Ham. Where no ham has gone before.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Good one, Maurice!
Yeah sad it took us twenty years to get with the program.

SpacerGuy said...

Yeah Science Fiction rocks. Nice one guys.

Nigel G Mitchell said...

That is shocking that Russia put women into space decades before the United states. Thanks for enlightening me

SpacerGuy said...

You're welcome Nigel. It may sound weird now but Russia's female cosmonauts actually led the way forward breaking freaky, new space frontiers 49 years ago!

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