Posted on 11/30/2015 11:22:02 AM PST by Kaslin
Never let a day go by without learning something new if you can. For instance, I glanced through the news this morning and discovered something amazing: Hillary Clinton wanted to be an astronaut. This came as a bit of a shock, because from all the previous reporting I’d noticed regarding the presumptive Democrat nominee’s childhood dreams, I thought she wanted to be a Marine. (Before The Man crushed her hopes and dreams because she was a girl, that is.) But as it turns out, before she longed to storm the beaches at Iwo Jima, the future First Lady wanted to go into space. Sadly, she was once again informed that that the He Man Woman Hater’s Club wasn’t having any of that either. (Washington Post)
"Now, some of you may know that when I was a little girl growing up in Illinois, I was interested in all kinds of stories about women. And my mother … actually told me about Amelia Earhart. And then when we decided, under President Kennedy's leadership, that our nation was going to go to the moon and we were going to have an astronaut program, I wanted to be an astronaut. So when I was about 13, I wrote to NASA and asked what I needed to do to try to be an astronaut. And of course, there weren't any women astronauts, and NASA wrote me back and said there would not be any women astronauts. And I was just crestfallen. But then I realized I couldn't see very well, and I wasn't all that athletic, so probably, I wouldn't be the first woman astronaut anyway."
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speech at event celebrating Amelia Earhart, March 20, 2012
The fact checkers at the WaPo find themselves struggling with this one because, well… nobody seems to keep track of letters from half a century ago. But the overall tone of the supposed letter seems questionable.
Clinton, born in October 1947, would have been 13 when Kennedy announced the moon goal in May 1961. (She has said she was between 12 and 14.)
Neither the Clinton campaign nor NASA could produce the correspondence. But NASA spokeswoman Lauren Worley said the agency has "no reason to doubt its authenticity."
If NASA rejected Clinton because there was no astronaut program for women or immediate plans for one around 1961 or 1962, the response would have been consistent with the agency's policy on female astronauts at the time, according to agency officials.
The Washington Post Fact Checker clearly devoted a lot of effort to this investigation, digging up the total number of letters received by NASA during that period and providing several examples. My initial thought upon hearing this story was that it was unlikely that NASA – in the starting stages of a mad dash to reach the moon in nine years – would be answering letters from (then) obscure children. But as it turns out, they actually did answer much of their correspondence, so it’s possible that Hillary wrote to them and received a letter in response.
But was it that much of a flat out, girls need not apply answer? The majority of the letters they found from NASA were actually encouraging in tone and seemed to express gratitude that anyone would be interested in them at that point. Defenders of Hillary’s claim are citing a so called “Miss Kelly letter” which once showed up on Reddit but has since disappeared.
I’ll have to go with the Post on this one, at least to a point. She’s been telling the story for so long (not that I’d heard it) that perhaps she actually did write a letter, or at least believes she did. And they clearly weren’t taking women into the program at that point because it was pretty much just the men of steel test pilots who were chosen to go into space. But did NASA really smack her down in a dismissive fashion and tell her that there would not be any women astronauts? That sounds a bit too convenient to the 2016 edition of Hillary and the narrative she’s weaving for her base.
Either way, it won’t matter in the long run. Next week we’ll no doubt find out that she wanted to be a professional boxer.
She was Lost in Space material from an early age.
Exactly.
I want women to have to sign up for the draft, just like men do. Women want equality, let’s have real equality. They can have equal rights to dig ditches, too, not just be CEOs and astronauts.
Hillary was disqualified for training when she asked the trainer, “Does this Astronaut Suit make my ass look big?”
Hillary ,a Failure at Everything ?
‘How NASA crushed Hillary Clinton’s dreams of being an astronaut’
Next years headline:
How Conservatives crushed Hillary Clinton’s dreams of being President.
Hillary...the Astronut.
So she wanted to be an astronaut, a marine, was shot at in Bosnia, was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, never told her staff to erase the hard drives, had no idea that Bill was porking interns, and likely has no idea what happened to Vince Foster either.
Yep. And when the engineer replied “No, ma’am, it makes it look silver. Your ass makes your ass look too big,” she had him shot.
Anyways, seems Bubba did it his way....
Lol!!
Is it too late to send her to Mars? I’m sure we could take up a collection to help pay for the rocket fuel....
Born in 1948, Hillary claims she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary who, on 29 May 1953, with Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
That's why the whole thing doesn't fit...she went to the Marines instead of the Air Force.
I know...every branch has planes.
I wanted to be an astronaut. Or a cowboy. Or Superman.
Then I hit puberty and all I wanted was to get laid.
Astronaut? I thought her quest and dreams were of being a planet.
The acceleration during takeoff would compress her cankles.
If they had considered her and then cut her because of eyesight, she would still be whining. How about this Hillary, try being a good wife and mother.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.