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NASA Astronaut Group 8
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NASA Astronaut Group 8
NASA Astronaut Group 8 was a group of 35 astronauts announced on January 16, 1978. It was the first NASA selection since Group 6 in 1967, and was the largest group to that date. The class was the first to include female and minority astronauts; of the 35 selected, six were women, two were Jewish American, three were African American, and one was Asian American. Due to the long delay between the last Apollo lunar mission in 1972 and the first flight of the Space Shuttle in 1981, few astronauts from the older groups remained, and they were outnumbered by the newcomers, who became known as the Thirty-Five New Guys (TFNG). From then until 2000, a new group of candidates was selected roughly every two years.
In Astronaut Group 8, two different kinds of astronaut were selected: pilots and mission specialists. The group consisted of 15 pilots, all test pilots, and 20 mission specialists. NASA stopped sending non-pilots for one year of pilot training. It also ceased appointing astronauts on selection. Instead, starting with this group, new selections were considered astronaut candidates rather than fully-fledged astronauts until they finished their training.
Four members of this group, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, and Ronald McNair, died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. These four, plus Shannon Lucid, received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, giving this astronaut class five total recipients of this top NASA award. This is second only to the New Nine class of 1962, which received seven. The careers of the TFNGs would span the entire Space Shuttle Program. They reshaped the image of the American astronaut into one that more closely resembled the diversity of American society, and opened the doors for others that would follow.
The enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 gave teeth to the promise of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to address the persistent and entrenched employment discrimination against women, African Americans and other minority groups in American society. Specifically, it empowered the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to take enforcement action against individuals, employers, and labor unions that violated the employment provisions of the 1964 Act, and expanded the jurisdiction of the commission to deal with them. It also extended the scope of affirmative action, mandating that all executive branch agencies also comply with the act. Supporters of the legislation hoped that it would spur social change, but culture was not so easily changed. Women in science and engineering still found the culture off-putting, and while colleges dramatically increased their enrollment of women in these fields, many women found themselves in classrooms mostly filled with men, some of whom were openly hostile to their presence. Although in the early 1970s women received 40 percent of the PhDs awarded in biology, they represented just 4 percent of those in engineering; the 10 percent mark was not reached until the 1990s, by which time African Americans were awarded 2 percent of doctorates in all fields of science and engineering.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was no paragon of diversity in 1972. Most of its twelve major facilities were located in the southern United States. Eight of them had created equal employment/affirmative action offices, but six of them were entirely staffed by white people. In 1971, the Administrator of NASA, James C. Fletcher, appointed Ruth Bates Harris, an African-American, as NASA's Director of Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), but before she commenced work on 4 October 1971, Fletcher demoted her to deputy director, and reduced her responsibility to dealing with contractors only. In 1973, 5.6 percent of NASA staff were minorities, and 18 percent were women at a time when the United States federal civil service averages were 20 and 34 percent respectively. Although NASA employed 4,432 women, only 310 were in science and engineering, of which just four were in the top grades, counting Harris. Although it could be argued that women and minorities were under-represented in the aerospace engineering industry as a whole, NASA was no better at recruiting women as lawyers than as scientists, and while minorities were well represented in the ranks of NASA's janitors (69 percent), it employed no women to perform this work. The Kennedy Space Center had 43 grades of secretaries so women could be promoted without reaching management levels.
Harris soon proved a feisty and forceful presence who was unafraid to ask uncomfortable questions. After reading a newspaper report that Wernher von Braun had used slave labor to build his rockets during World War II, she asked him if it was true. She wanted her original job back, and civil service rules required that affirmative action directors report directly to the administrators of government agencies. To fill the position, NASA's deputy administrator, George Low, appointed Dudley McConnell, NASA's most senior African-American engineer to the position, with Harris as one of his deputies. Harris, Samuel Lynn (a former Tuskegee airman) and Joseph M. Hogan prepared a report on the state of equal opportunity in NASA on their own time, and submitted it directly to Fletcher. The report concluded:
NASA has demonstrated to the world that it has limitless imagination, vision, capability, courage and faith, limitless persistence and infinite space potential. It made the United States a winner in space and improved the quality of life for all people. ... However, in spite of sincere efforts on the part of some NASA management and employees, human rights in NASA have not even gotten off the ground. In fact, Equal Opportunity is a sham in NASA.
Fletcher fired Harris, transferred Hogan, and gave Lynn a stern warning. To the surprise of Fletcher and Low, Harris's firing generated a storm of negative coverage in the media. Seventy NASA employees protested the decision, and NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyers petitioned the United States Civil Service Commission to rule Harris's dismissal as an unlawful reprisal. NASA's legal counsel advised Fletcher to settle. The United States Senate Committee on Appropriations wanted for an explanation, and Senator William Proxmire grilled McConnell. Aides urged Fletcher to appear before the United States Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences. Fletcher demurred; he was a Mormon, and his church practised racial exclusion until 1978, so he sent the Jewish Low in his place in January 1974. Low urged McConnell to hire Harriet G. Jenkins as his deputy, and when he resisted, Low had Fletcher hire her. In August 1974, Harris was re-hired, but in a new role in community outreach and public relations, and she left NASA in 1976. Jenkins replaced McConnell, and would hold down the position until 1992. Great changes would occur on her watch.
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NASA Astronaut Group 8
NASA Astronaut Group 8 was a group of 35 astronauts announced on January 16, 1978. It was the first NASA selection since Group 6 in 1967, and was the largest group to that date. The class was the first to include female and minority astronauts; of the 35 selected, six were women, two were Jewish American, three were African American, and one was Asian American. Due to the long delay between the last Apollo lunar mission in 1972 and the first flight of the Space Shuttle in 1981, few astronauts from the older groups remained, and they were outnumbered by the newcomers, who became known as the Thirty-Five New Guys (TFNG). From then until 2000, a new group of candidates was selected roughly every two years.
In Astronaut Group 8, two different kinds of astronaut were selected: pilots and mission specialists. The group consisted of 15 pilots, all test pilots, and 20 mission specialists. NASA stopped sending non-pilots for one year of pilot training. It also ceased appointing astronauts on selection. Instead, starting with this group, new selections were considered astronaut candidates rather than fully-fledged astronauts until they finished their training.
Four members of this group, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, and Ronald McNair, died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. These four, plus Shannon Lucid, received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, giving this astronaut class five total recipients of this top NASA award. This is second only to the New Nine class of 1962, which received seven. The careers of the TFNGs would span the entire Space Shuttle Program. They reshaped the image of the American astronaut into one that more closely resembled the diversity of American society, and opened the doors for others that would follow.
The enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 gave teeth to the promise of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to address the persistent and entrenched employment discrimination against women, African Americans and other minority groups in American society. Specifically, it empowered the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to take enforcement action against individuals, employers, and labor unions that violated the employment provisions of the 1964 Act, and expanded the jurisdiction of the commission to deal with them. It also extended the scope of affirmative action, mandating that all executive branch agencies also comply with the act. Supporters of the legislation hoped that it would spur social change, but culture was not so easily changed. Women in science and engineering still found the culture off-putting, and while colleges dramatically increased their enrollment of women in these fields, many women found themselves in classrooms mostly filled with men, some of whom were openly hostile to their presence. Although in the early 1970s women received 40 percent of the PhDs awarded in biology, they represented just 4 percent of those in engineering; the 10 percent mark was not reached until the 1990s, by which time African Americans were awarded 2 percent of doctorates in all fields of science and engineering.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was no paragon of diversity in 1972. Most of its twelve major facilities were located in the southern United States. Eight of them had created equal employment/affirmative action offices, but six of them were entirely staffed by white people. In 1971, the Administrator of NASA, James C. Fletcher, appointed Ruth Bates Harris, an African-American, as NASA's Director of Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), but before she commenced work on 4 October 1971, Fletcher demoted her to deputy director, and reduced her responsibility to dealing with contractors only. In 1973, 5.6 percent of NASA staff were minorities, and 18 percent were women at a time when the United States federal civil service averages were 20 and 34 percent respectively. Although NASA employed 4,432 women, only 310 were in science and engineering, of which just four were in the top grades, counting Harris. Although it could be argued that women and minorities were under-represented in the aerospace engineering industry as a whole, NASA was no better at recruiting women as lawyers than as scientists, and while minorities were well represented in the ranks of NASA's janitors (69 percent), it employed no women to perform this work. The Kennedy Space Center had 43 grades of secretaries so women could be promoted without reaching management levels.
Harris soon proved a feisty and forceful presence who was unafraid to ask uncomfortable questions. After reading a newspaper report that Wernher von Braun had used slave labor to build his rockets during World War II, she asked him if it was true. She wanted her original job back, and civil service rules required that affirmative action directors report directly to the administrators of government agencies. To fill the position, NASA's deputy administrator, George Low, appointed Dudley McConnell, NASA's most senior African-American engineer to the position, with Harris as one of his deputies. Harris, Samuel Lynn (a former Tuskegee airman) and Joseph M. Hogan prepared a report on the state of equal opportunity in NASA on their own time, and submitted it directly to Fletcher. The report concluded:
NASA has demonstrated to the world that it has limitless imagination, vision, capability, courage and faith, limitless persistence and infinite space potential. It made the United States a winner in space and improved the quality of life for all people. ... However, in spite of sincere efforts on the part of some NASA management and employees, human rights in NASA have not even gotten off the ground. In fact, Equal Opportunity is a sham in NASA.
Fletcher fired Harris, transferred Hogan, and gave Lynn a stern warning. To the surprise of Fletcher and Low, Harris's firing generated a storm of negative coverage in the media. Seventy NASA employees protested the decision, and NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyers petitioned the United States Civil Service Commission to rule Harris's dismissal as an unlawful reprisal. NASA's legal counsel advised Fletcher to settle. The United States Senate Committee on Appropriations wanted for an explanation, and Senator William Proxmire grilled McConnell. Aides urged Fletcher to appear before the United States Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences. Fletcher demurred; he was a Mormon, and his church practised racial exclusion until 1978, so he sent the Jewish Low in his place in January 1974. Low urged McConnell to hire Harriet G. Jenkins as his deputy, and when he resisted, Low had Fletcher hire her. In August 1974, Harris was re-hired, but in a new role in community outreach and public relations, and she left NASA in 1976. Jenkins replaced McConnell, and would hold down the position until 1992. Great changes would occur on her watch.
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