dr. rand y lovelace at albuquerque, new mexico and dr. lovelace writes back, fill out this form and your date is a month away. can you come? so i was not on the original list. but and i was 21 and i was too young. they had to get extra permission for me to take the same tests as the mercury 7 astronauts took. now they have picked 25 women candidates out of the records and there weren't records in washington, d.c. in those days. for this, there were. and at 99 headquarters. but it wasn't as it is today. so comprehensive. they found women that had a college education. over 1,000 hours of flight time. i had to have a commercial instrument rating. top physical condition. and be willing to go through these tests. so i said yes, of course i want to go. and yes, of course get information for me to go because i'm just a kid. well, it turned out that was to my benefit. because i had no preconceived ideas of what was going to happen in any of these tests. i had no idea that things could be done to my body and to my mind. that they did do as a youngs