The Mercury 13
Producer Laurie Kahn Leavitt
In Development
The Mercury 13 will tell the story of the 13 women pilots who successfully went through the same “right stuff” physical and psychological astronaut testing as the Mercury 7, hoping to be part of the American space program in 1960 and 1961 – more than twenty years before the first American women were allowed to travel into space.
Viewers of The Mercury 13 will meet Jerrie Cobb, the pilot’s pilot from Oklahoma who learned to fly at the age of twelve and could fly (and fix) just about any plane she’d ever been around. The audience will also learn about the medical research of Randy Lovelace, the innovative doctor/pilot whom NASA hired to test the most qualified male pilots for the astronaut program. Lovelace wondered how women would hold up under the rigorous tests. After testing Cobb in 1960, he was astounded by the results. And he wondered if Cobb was an anomaly.
With private funding provided by veteran test pilot Jackie Cochran (who had led the WASP –Women’s Airforce Service Pilots program in WWII), eighteen other experienced women pilots were then brought to the Lovelace Clinic in New Mexico, one or two at a time, for testing — and twelve of them passed with excellent scores (making a total of 13 successful astronaut candidates). But the Navy abruptly pulled the plug in September of 1961. NASA, it turns out, had told the Navy they didn’t “require” the tests.
The inside story of the intrepid women pilots of the Mercury 13, their lives, their expectations, their hopes, their tenacity, and their understanding of the space program will be at the center of this film. They are strong, engaging, independent characters, and their story sheds light on many issues in 20th century American history: the nature of women’s work opportunities and choices, the history of aviation and space policy, the state of medical thinking in the middle of the 20th century, and the ideas and attitudes embedded in American popular culture and politics of the 1950’s and 1960’s.