The Mercury 13 Commemorative Pin T-Shirt

The Mercury 13 Commemorative Pin In the early 1960s. Dr. William Lovelace’s "Woman in Space Program" was a short-lived, privately-funded project testing women pilots for astronaut fitness. Although nothing concrete resulted, the women who participated have since been recognized as trailblazers, whose ambitions to fly the newest and the fastest craft led them to be among the first American women to gain access to sophisticated aerospace medical tests. Those women were considered at the time to be the "First Lady Astronaut Trainees." In the end, thirteen women passed the same physical examinations that the Lovelace Foundation had developed for NASA’s astronaut selection process. In 1995, when NASA Astronaut Eileen Collins was launched into space as the first woman to pilot the space shuttle, she invited the surviving members of the "FLATS" to her launch. The term "The Mercury 13" was coined by Hollywood producer James Cross as a comparison to the Mercury Seven name given to the selected male astronauts. The Mercury 13 women were not part of NASA's astronaut program, never flew in space as part of a NASA mission, and never met as a whole group. This however doesn't diminish the fact that (given the same training), they COULD have performed as well as the Mercury 7. This commemorative pin is the symbol for the planet Mercury with the number 13 inserted into the center. It is for all of the young women who look up to these pioneers and dream of spaceflight for themselves one day.