Welcome to your Monday open thread. It’s not just Monday, it’s a wintery Monday. Stay warm folks!
This is a great story – Wally Funk, one of the female astronaut trainees in the 1960s, will finally get to go into space.
With the purchase of a $200,000 ticket to ride Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane from southern New Mexico, the flight instructor who five decades ago was part of a group called the First Lady Astronaut Trainees is finally on the doorstep of her dream of spaceflight.
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Funk came closest to her dream of being a pioneering female astronaut in 1961 when, at 21, she became the youngest volunteer in an Albuquerque-based private program that evaluated women’s fitness for spaceflight.
Twenty-five women from around the country were invited to participate, 19 accepted, and the baker’s dozen who passed the demanding series of tests were dubbed the Mercury 13.
The name is a spinoff of the Mercury 7 male astronauts, introduced to the public by NASA in early 1959, who would take part in the nation’s initial spaceflight program.
“All the guys got the glory,” Funk said. “We didn’t.”
The program was canceled before the women could take part in advanced testing at a naval facility in Pensacola, Fla. Funk was disappointed but didn’t let go of her dream.
The women’s astronaut program fell victim to the sexism of the time. We had to wait 20 more years before women were allowed to go into space.
Republicans continue their search for the one perfect wingnut – the wingularity! Apparently Texas state Speaker of the House Joe Straus is not it.
The current state House Speaker is Joe Straus, a conservative Republican leading a conservative Republican majority. He’s currently facing a challenge from state Rep. Ken Paxton, who appears to agree with Straus on nearly everything.
So what makes this noteworthy? Straus is Jewish, and some far-right activists in Texas have a problem with that.
A few weeks ago, a coalition of Tea Party and right-wing Republican groups began lobbying for Paxton to replace Straus, with coalition activists circulating anti-Semitic emails. The message from conservatives was that the GOP state House needed a “Christian conservative” leader.
This week, the Texas Observer reported on an email exchange between two members of the State Republican Executive Committee, which governs state GOP affairs. One of the two party leaders, John Cook, insisted in a message, “We elected a house with Christian, conservative values. We now want a true Christian, conservative running it.”
Sorry, Joe Straus. It doesn’t matter how many years of service you’ve put into the Republican party.