Jerrie Cobb & The Mercury 13

JERRIE COBB AND THE MERCURY 13 is a limited 9-hour series based on a true story that was buried for decades…..We travel back to the early 1960s when astronauts are the nation’s superheroes….and watch a dramatic conflict erupt when Jerrie Cobb and twelve more female pilots pass the grueling, infamous Mercury astronaut tests.

SERIES SYNOPSIS: From the age of twelve, female pilot Jerrie Cobb wants to fly higher and faster than anyone else. Although painfully shy, she talks herself into a fulltime position flying surplus warplanes around the world.

At the dawn of the Space Age, Jerrie (Pilot of the Year in 1959) gets the opportunity to take the rigorous “right stuff” Mercury astronaut tests. And she knocks the socks off the doctors. They think she must be a one-of-a-kind female, so she sets out to prove them wrong -- to show them that women pilots can be astronauts.

Jerrie approaches her childhood hero -- the rich, commanding, larger-than-life pilot Jackie Cochran --  to raise the money to put other female pilots through the infamous right stuff tests. Jackie agrees.  Jackie and Jerrie both recruit experienced, intrepid female pilots and twelve more pass the tests. It looks like this colorful group of thirteen female pilots have a shot at flying in space!

Even though these successful female pilots have thousands of hours of flying time under their belts, even though they are willing to risk their lives to help the US launch a woman into space before the USSR does, they are up against huge obstacles that are fundamentally cultural, not physical. 

NASA pulls the plug on the Woman in Space Program with no explanation. Tension grows between Jerrie and Jackie, but Jerrie overcomes her extreme shyness to become the de facto leader of the Mercury 13.

Together with fellow female pilot Briggs Hart, she takes on the nation’s powerbrokers, and sparks a debate in the US Congress over whether women should be eligible for the space program. Their testimony before Congress is eloquent, but Jackie Cochran undermines them, and America’s greatest astronaut hero, John Glenn, testifies against them --upending their quest.

Jerrie decides to move to the Amazon jungle, where she spends the rest of her life flying supplies into remote indigenous tribes. The series ends when Jerrie finds out that Russia has launched the first female into space. Our last shot is Jerrie, wistful and stunned, but ultimately exultant, dancing on the wing of her plane in the moonlight in the jungle.

THE WORLD OF THE SERIES   The story takes place in the 1950s and early 1960s: a period of bright optimism, and rigid social roles.

LENGTH OF EPISODES  nine one hour episodes

SERIES THEMES: justice, the barriers to social change, female friendship, the context of the Cold War, and the lure of space.

TARGET AUDIENCE: The same sorts of people who watched and enjoyed the film Hidden Figures.

ACCESS TO THE STORY Laurie Kahn has interviewed most of the Mercury 13 pilots (many of them have now passed away).  And she’s interviewed NASA officials who were involved as supporters and detractors of the female pilots who wanted to be part of the “final frontier.” She’s also done extensive research for this story in the archives at NASA, the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in DC, the International Women’s Air & Space Museum in Ohio, and the presidential libraries of Dwight Eisenhower (in Kansas), John F. Kennedy (in Massachusetts), and Lyndon B. Johnson (in Texas).

CONCLUSION  Jerrie Cobb and the Mercury 13 will satisfy the public’s hunger for stories about strong women who’ve been overlooked by history.  It’s a fresh, new story about the space race. It’s the true chronicle of a group that faced down injustice.  And it’s the right story for the moment we live in. 

FUNDERS

Mass Humanities | JFK Presidential Library | LBJ Presidential Library | Eisenhower Presidential Library | The Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College

BOARD OF ADVISORS

Nancy Cott (Harvard University) | Susan Douglas (University of Michigan, Department of Communications Studies) | Roger Launius National (Air and Space Museum Division of Space History) | Howard McCurdy (American University, School of Public Affairs) | Susan Ware (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University) | Margaret Weitekamp (National Air and Space Museum, Division of Space History)