Promised The Moon
by: Ryan Hockemeyer
Promised The Moon by Stephanie Nolen
In the early days of space exploration, well before the first moon landing, a small group of female pilots took the same physical evaluations as the Mercury astronauts as part of a privately funded research program on women in space. Jerrie Cobb, the first woman to finish the tests, went on to successfully complete the other two phases of astronaut testing, but her fellow candidates were turned away at the last minute. This book tells the story of Cobb, her "Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees," and the clash of politics and personality that surrounded their dream of spaceflight.
The Journey to the Moon and How It Relates to ESS
As the Moon was a mysterious object in our sky since the beginning of time, all people wanted to do was figure out what it was and where it came from. During the Hadeon eon when a Mars sized meteor named Theia struck Earth and its remnants created the moon, many people like Jerrie Cobb had a drive to take at least one step on the wonderful masterpiece.
Personal Opinion
I think Promised The Moon by Stephanie Nolen is a pretty good book. I am not much of a reader and this book had me very interested in what happened next many times. It was a slow read for a while but as I got deeper into the book the pace started to pick up and became more and more intriguing. The story behind the first woman to get involved in the space race was awesome with the fact that it was mostly ran by the Male race.
Quotes
"The plan called for the rocket to carry the capsule to the edge of the atmosphere, where the arc of flight would propel it through the atmosphere and into orbit around the earth." (Nolen 77)
"And NASA's engineers were struggling with the design of the capsule. It had to be small--really small--because the Atlas rocket could launch a maximum payload of twenty-seven hundred pounds" (Nolen 87)
"The Australian Air Force had a Women's Auxiliary, and so did Canada, although few of those women actually flew. There were also extraordinary stories coming out of Russia about three separate divisions of female fighter pilots" (Nolen 41)