A story that has been making the rounds is of a 1962 NASA rejection letter to a hopeful female astronaut.
It thanks the author for her “offer to go on a space mission” but advises her that “we have no existing program concerning women astronauts nor do we contemplate any such plan.”
Maybe they couldn’t see Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Equal Pay Act of 1963 on the horizon. Either that, or they could and yet chose to move full steam … backwards.
It’s distressing – paradoxical even – to see such clear evidence of an ostensibly forward-thinking organization mired in such ancient misogynistic thinking.
