Conference turris::womannotes-v2

    Funny how they just lumped women and rookies in together.
    As if there weren't any differences between the two types.

Since this topic isn't attracting any discussion, can I expand it to
include aviation in general? I'm not aware of that many pilots among
the female population. It is only occasionally that I will hear a 
woman's voice on the radios, either from air traffic control, of from 
the flight deck. I am involved in an search and search and rescue 
organization, and among out 50 or so pilots, there is only one woman,
an excellent pilot, and an instructor of survival techniques and gear.
There are other women in the organization, but they concentrate on
communications, ground search teams, and administrative activities rather
than flying. 

Why is it that such a relatively few number of women are drawn to aviation.

				Tom_K

I have no objections to this becoming a topic on women in aviation (not just
space), but I'm curious: What's the story on Sally Ride?  I understand that
she is no longer with NASA.  Is this true?  Someone mentioned that the women
who had been up on the shuttle before (and survived) are either retired 
or on maternity leave.  Can someone retire at Sally's young age?  Who is on
maternity leave?  I thought that astronauts weren't supposed to have children
after they had been in space (?).

            Carol

	Sally Ride left NASA, as did a number of male astronauts, following
	the Challenger disaster. She served on a panel which made a number 
	of recommendations to NASA following the Challenger disaster. I think
	this was before she left NASA.


					Tom_K

    I witnessed the Sally Ride ride, and was stranded (through an odd
    series of events) at the guard station to the base.  A woman police
    officer and a civilian-dressed woman administrator chatted with
    me and my daughter until the officer drove me on to base (to catch
    up with my son).  
    
    Anyway, I asked them how they felt about the first woman space flight.
    In a wonderfully musical southern twang, the civial-dressed woman
    said "HELL, its about time!"  she had stopped in the night before
    on her way to a launch party, and ended up staying all night working
    there because they needed her.
    
    They both explained that there had been hard times for women employees
    at NASA.  Women who became pregnant were "resigned" from the security
    force as a matter of course, and promotions for all women were SLOW
    in arriving.  The women banded together and forced negotiations
    with management regarding pregnancies layoffs, quietly whispering
    the L word (litigation).  
    
    Management cited the inability to wear the standard uniform and
    carry a holster.  The women designed a pregnancy holster and pregnancy
    security uniform, and management (in their litigous-fearing hearts)
    accepted the proposal.
    
    So, HELL, its about time...

    re:.5
    
    I'll check, but I'm sure that Sally Ride left NASA before the
    Challenger Disaster. I don't believe that anyone on the Rogers
    Commission studying the incident were employees of NASA.
    
    --- jerry

    Sally was scheduled for the next shuttle flight after the challenger.
    However after the big bang, the delay in timing she retired from
    the space program, and was a part of the investigation.  I don't
    know if the was on the Rogers Commission.  
    
    I am not a hundred percent sure of all this as it is from memory,
    and with age that is the first thing to fail, and I don't remember
    what the other one is.
    
    :-)
    
    Dave

    Sally Ride resigned from NASA following the Challenger disaster
    and was then assigned to the Rogers Commission.  Her duty was to
    present a report detailing what was needed to make the shuttle safer
    and what direction NASA and the US should take in the future of
    space exploration (with timetable and events.).  This report is
    called the Ride Report and can be purchased, though I know not how.
    
    jim
    

  I'm not completely certain, but I believe that after her work
  on the Roger's commision, Sally Ride did leave NASA. She did not
  retire, however; she is now working for a think-tank (sorry,
  I don't remember which one).    

Thanks for all of the info on Sally Ride.  What about the parental issue?
I thought astronauts were not supposed to have children after they went 
up in space due to possible chromosome damage or some such?

          Carol

    I checked my copy of the Rogers Commission Report, which was
    published in June 1986, and about Sally Ride (in the bio-
    graphical sketches of the Commissioners), it says (relevant
    portions quoted):
    
    	"...She holds a Doctorate in Physics from Stanford
    	University (1978) and is still an active astronaut."
    
    It's certainly doubtful that a Doctor her age is retired. Her
    resume probably got her a good job wherever she is. As for the
    second half of the sentence, it would indicate that at least
    as of the publication of the Report (five months after the
    Challenger incident), she was still working for NASA, since
    it's not possible to be an "active astronaut" unless you work
    for NASA or are in one of the military services. (Before anyone
    says anything, Christa McAuliffe was an exception.)
    
    As to when she left NASA, and where she's working now, I have
    no idea.
    
    --- jerry

    One can retire from one field, for instance from professional
    football or the astronaut program, and still be active in another
    field, such as restaurant management or physics. 
    
    My only source on Ride and the other women astronauts was the
    morning news on (I think) Boston's Channel 5, in which one of the
    reporters specifically said in so many words that Ride had retired
    from the astronaut program.  Didn't say when, where, or how. 
    
    --bonnie

	This seemed like the best place to post this. It's an excerpt
	from an article in AOPA Pilot magazine. It's a little long, but
	the last paragraph, and especially, the last sentence make it 
	worthwhile. - Tom_K

		Madeline (Mimi) Tompkins, the first officer on Aloha Airlines
		Flight 243 was hand-flying the Boeing 737-200 from the right
		seat. It was the longest trip of the day, Hilo to Honolulu,
		41 minutes block to block. Tompkins was leveling off at
		Flight Level 240 [24,000 feet above sea-level -Tom_K] 
		when an 18 foot stretch of the top fuselage a few feet aft of
		the cockpit departed the airplane with an explosive roar. The
		flight attendant in the first-class cabin was blown out the 
		aircraft. The cockpit door was ripped off, and paper and 
		debris filled the air. Soft-drink cans blew in through the 
		open doorway and collected on the floor. Passengers were
		whipped with shredded metal parts.

		Tompkins and Captain Robert Schornstheimer were stunned but 
		alive and uninjured. After a few turbulent, wildly confusing
		seconds, the adrenalin began to pump.

		Each had successfully handled engine failures in the past,
		Schornstheimer as an Air Force T-38 instructor and Tompkins
		as a general aviation flight instructor and charter pilot.
		Each had been schooled in sophisticated motion simulators
		to cope with multiple mechanical emergencies in the 737. But
		no simulator is programmed to reproduce the effects of the 
		loss of a major portion of the fuselage and all of the 
		resulting problems. Schornstheimer and Tompkins had to 
		innovate.

		Schornstheimer took over the controls and immediately began
		a power off descent. Tompkins switched the transponder code
		to 7700 [causes the air traffic controller's display to 
		indicate to the controller that the aircraft has an emergency
		-Tom_K] and tried unsuccessfully to contact Honolulu Center 
		controllers, then realized that her headset had been blown 
		off. The noise in the cockpit was deafening, so she 
		communicated to Schornstheimer using hand signals. Each made
		a sweeping motion to the right, wordlessly agreeing to divert 
		to Maui, 30 miles off the right wing on the other side of
		a volcano.

		Annunciator lights were beginning to glow. The left engine 
		was not operating. They tried a restart with no luck. The 
		cabin floor had buckled, severing power control cables to 
		the left engine. Control cables, which ran beneath the deformed 
		cabin floor, were chafing in their guides, but remained 
		functional.

		Flaps and slats operated properly until Schornstheimer 
		selected an intermediate position. Suddenly, the cockpit was 
		buffeted by turbulence, and the airplane began to shake
		and rock as if the wings were stalling. They decided on a
		partial flap/slat approach at a higher than normal reference
		speed. 

		Green lights confirmed that the main gear had extended, but 
		there was no green for the nosewheel. Tompkins followed
		the emergency gear extension procedure, but the light did
		not illuminate.  The airport was three miles ahead, and the 
		right engine was almost at takeoff power. They were committed
		to land, nosewheel light or not.
	
		An 18 knot crosswind swept the runway. Schornstheimer had
		to maneuver around low clouds on the approach and was now on 
		glidepath but left of the runway centerline. Tompkins called
		out the correction.

		They crossed the threshold and cut the power, and an instant 
		later the tires squeaked on.  The flight crew remained in the
		cockpit to complete the emergency evacuation check list. "We
		spent a minute or two going through the check list," Tompkins
		remembers. "It seemed like hours."

		They then helped passengers out of their seats and down the 
		evacuation slides. 

		Later that evening the two pilots hopped aboard an Aloha
		flight back to Honolulu. Eighteen days later Tompkins
		started captain upgrade school. She now flys left seat
		on Aloha cargo runs. Schornstheimer resumed flying the line
		three weeks after the accident.The Boeing 737 is in a Maui
		scrapyard.

		In the thirteen minutes it took to descend from 24,000 feet,
		the pilots faced structural failure, explosive decompression,
		emergency descent, communications failure, total loss of power
		in one engine, balky flight controls, a landing gear indicator
		failure, and a single engine, partial flap/slat approach.
		They coped by recalling from memory the essential portions
		of 17 emergency procedures checklists for the Boeing 737. In
		the midst of chaos on Aloha Flight 243, professional calm
		prevailed in the cockpit, and 94 people still live.

    Thanks for posting that, Tom.  I remember hearing about that incident,
    though not that the First was female.  Would that the poor attendant
    hadn't been killed, that was the only real tragedy, wasn't it? 
    Did they ever determine what caused the decomposition?
    
    						=maggie 

	Yes, it was a tragedy that the Flight Attendant was lost. Makes
	for a convincing argument to wear seat belts at all times during
	a flight. The article contained a photograph taken during the
	evacuation - people were sitting in chairs with literally nothing
	above or next to them, held to the aircraft only by the seat rails.

	The National Transportation Safety Board generally takes a year
	to conduct an investigation and release it's report. Speculation
	that I heard of centers around the fact that the types of operations
	the airliner was used for (many very short flights) stressed the
	airframe a greater number of times than would be seen by an aircraft
	with the same number of hours that saw more conventional usage.
	This repeated cycling eventually weakened the structure and caused
	it to fail. Other speculation centers on possible design or 
	construction errors. 

	As a fan of aviation, it disappoints me that the image that most people
	have of women in aviation is that of a Barbie-doll stewardess. Flight
	Attendants are professionals, and their job has special demands that 
	are, thank God,	rarely required. Women also belong on the flight deck,
	and while I know few pilots who are female, the ones I know are as
	competent as their male colleagues. That this is so should not be 
	surprising, but I don't like to miss an opportunity to point it out, 
	although in this file, I'm preaching to the converted...

							Tom_K