Dames in Space
to put female pilots into space. Dr. William Randolph “Randy” Lovelace II, head of a NASA special committee on bioastronautics, who tested the Mercury 7 male astronauts, thought women’s. She would go on to fly for Beechcraft. Cobb, 87, spent 30 years as a missionary flying supplies in to remote corners of South America. December 14-23, 1986, 34-year-old Ninety-Niner Jeana Yeager (no relation to Chuck Yeager), copiloted with Dick Rutan the first nonstop, non-refueled world circumnavigation aboard the Rutan Voyager aircraft. In July 1991, astronaut Eileen Collins traveled in space carrying one of Louise Thaden’s flying helmets signed by the 1929 Powder Puff Derby racers. On July 23, 1999, as the first woman to command a space shuttle, Collins brought Amelia Earhart’s scarf and a pilot license signed by Orville Wright in 1924 for Bobbi Trout, the last living Powder Puff racer, aboard Russian Space Station Mir.
