Editorial Note: Led by our Editor Dr Mike Hankins, From Balloons to Drones produces a monthly podcast that provides an outlet for the presentation and evaluation of air power scholarship, the exploration of historical topics and ideas, and provides a way to reach out to both new scholars and the general public. You can find our Soundcloud channel here. You can also find our podcast on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
In our latest episode, we interview Rebecca Siegel, author of To Fly Among the Stars: The Hidden Story of the Fight for Women Astronauts. In this interview, we discuss the Mercury Program and the 13 women who went through astronaut training but were not allowed to become astronauts. She also tells us about the process of how to make these complex, nuanced histories accessible to a younger audience.
Rebecca Siegel has a masters degree in English Literature from Loyola University, Chicago. She has worked in children’s publishing for over a decade, editing and writing books for school library publishers.
Header image: Jerrie Cobb operating the Multi-Axis Space Test Inertia Facility at the Lewis Research Center in Ohio. This test simulated bringing a spinning spacecraft under control and was one of many that the women of the Mercury 13 went through in order to qualify for space flight. (Source: Wikimedia)
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