Review: 'Mercury 13'

Perhaps it's fitting that the documentary "Mercury 13" premieres on Netflix the same week that Southwest Airlines pilot Tammie Jo Shults made news for her calm after the plane she was captaining lost an engine along with one of its windows. In the wake of her skilled handling of the problem, she made news not just for her heroics, but for her career as one of the first female fighter pilots in the Navy.

"Mercury 13" is the story of a group of female pilots who started astronaut training in the early 1960s in hopes of having the opportunity to go into space. But from the first frames, the film seeks to put the decisions that kept that group of women out of the astronaut program in the context of the overall struggles women pilots had faced since the earliest days of flight. Women pilots were at best seen as novelties and at worst were considered to be one mistake away from a disaster. And even when the female pilots accomplished something noteworthy, their feats were cast in the context of "Oh, look at this frilly woman is doing." There's an early newsreel clip included in the film that shows a woman breaking a speed record, as the announcer backhandedly offers congratulations while noting her hair is still perfectly coiffed.

It was into that world that some of America's best female pilots were invited to preliminary astronaut training as NASA's astronaut training for the Mercury missions was being planned. The group was winnowed down to 13 female candidates, but after two rounds of successful training, NASA halted the plan. Ultimately, the matter ended up in Congress, which held two days of hearings before shutting down the women's training.

The footage of the hearing is some of the hardest stuff to watch. Male astronauts John Glenn and Gordon Cooper testified against the idea and they barely disguised their feelings of surprise the idea was even being considered. Even a year later - after Russia had put the world's first woman in space - Cooper told a group of reporters the U.S. could have put a woman in space much earlier than Russia. "We could have flown her instead of the chimpanzee," he said to a room full of laughing reporters.

But for the women known as the Mercury 13, one of the hardest parts of the congressional hearing was listening to famed female test pilot and pioneer Jackie Cochran speak out against the idea of female astronauts. She argued that if NASA attempted to train female astronauts, they would lose too many of the candidates to marriage and other female distractions. It was a betrayal the women of the Mercury 13 never forgot.

The story of the Mercury 13 has a happy ending, or at least as much of one as you can have with a group of women who were denied their chance to touch the stars. But despite the bittersweet subject of the film, "Mercury 13" is as much a story of perseverance and ambition as it is the story of dreams denied. It's always important to remember how we got here and this is a film that brings a lot of forgotten stories to the forefront.

"Mercury 13" premieres on Netflix on Friday, April 20th.