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KPBS Midday Edition

True Story Of The Mercury 13 Brought To Old Globe Stage

The artwork for "They Promised Her The Moon" is pictured.
Courtesy of The Old Globe
The artwork for "They Promised Her The Moon" is pictured.

The first all-woman spacewalk was canceled late last month because there weren’t enough correctly sized space suits prepared for the spacewalk at the International Space Station. Despite the blunder, NASA’s inclusion of women has improved dramatically since the space program began. Today, about one-third of NASA’s active astronauts are women—but it wasn’t always that way.

In the sixties, when NASA was training the first male American astronauts, a separate program was training 13 women. But the women never got the chance to go to space.

A play, “They Promised Her The Moon,” being staged through May 12 at The Old Globe, tells the true story of Jerrie Cobb, one of the women astronaut hopefuls known as the Mercury 13. Their name referenced the men's group, the Mercury Seven. Despite outperforming her male counterparts during testing, Cobb never went to space.

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Playwright Laurel Ollstein and Morgan Hallett, the actress who plays Cobb, join Midday Edition on Monday to discuss the inspiration for the play.

A play at The Old Globe tells the true story of Jerrie Cobb, a woman who trained to become one of America’s first astronauts. Despite outperforming her male counterparts, Cobb never got the chance to go to space. GUESTS: Laurel Ollstein, playwright, “They Promised Her The Moon;” Morgan Hallett, actress who plays Jerrie Cobb, “They Promised Her The Moon”