Initial Study And Addendum #7, Lrdp Feir, Cardiovascular: Fill & Download for Free

I know a fair bit about this because I researched it for my award-winning Analog story, “For All Mankind” in which it featured prominently.Despite anything you may have seen to the contrary, there was never any such thing as a “women in space program” in the early days of the US space program, not under the auspices of NASA nor anywhere else, not in the way you mean.There was only ever a scientific study, and not by NASA.There was never a selection process.There were never any women astronaut candidates.There was never any “Mercury 13” training for space till the whole thing was mysteriously cancelled.The real history deserves to be remembered:When NASA started the Mercury program, one of the first tasks was to select an initial group of astronauts. Launching people into space on brand new rockets was no mean feat, and no one really knew what effect the trip would have on the human mind and body. It didn’t take long to decide the astronauts of the day must be test pilots with experience in high-performance military jets. This would, after all, be a program of test flights to greater heights and speeds than any human had ever endured.That precluded any women astronauts.That all the astronaut candidates were men was not directly sexist—no women anywhere in the country had the requisite experience. No women were high-performance test pilots. That of course, was indeed partly due to sexism. Plenty of women had gone into aviation during WWII, but when the war was over, the interesting work went back to the returning men—and very few colleges would even admit women into an engineering or aviation program. That was profoundly sexist, but that was the way it was at the time. Women were never going to fly in the early space program, but if this moon shot thing went okay...NASA administrators knew just who to call.Dr. Randy Lovelace had worked with the N.A.C.A. since its founding, and had pioneered the study of aeronautical medicine and the development of life support equipment for high altitude flight. In 1958, the newly chartered NASA made him the chair of its Special Advisory Committee on Life Sciences, and the next year, a group of aviation medicine experts at his Albuquerque clinic put 31 astronaut candidates through a week of medical exams to select the best of the best of the best, The Mercury Seven, America's first class of astronauts.But Lovelace understood these were not the only astronauts the country would be needing. If things went well, there was talk of space stations and lunar bases and a mission to Mars in the 1980s. That all would take a lot more than test pilots.And he knew just who to call.If no women were military jet test pilots with engineering degrees in 1960, Jerrie Cobb was as close as you could get. She’d ferried Lend Lease military aircraft around the world during WWII, set a number of records, and in 1959 as a test pilot for Rockwell International, set the Absolute Altitude record of 37,010 feet in its Aero Commander business aircraft.Lovelace asked her to submit to the same biomedical testing he’d devised for the Mercury astronauts, and found she did just as well as many of the men. You will sometimes see the claim that she out-performed all the men, but sorry, that’s no true.Lovelace added this to a report compiled for NASA, pointing out the women might have advantages in space—that among other things, they tend to be lighter, require less food and water, and use substantially less oxygen. None of that would matter in the short term, but for the longer missions to the planets…Lovelace gave a talk about this as a conference in Stockholm, and there came to the attention of Jacqueline Cochran, the storied (and wealthy) barnstormer who in 1958 at the age of 47, had broken the sound barrier in a borrowed Canadian fighter jet. Jackie agreed to fund Lovelace’s research into the fitness of women for spaceflight.Working mostly through the Ninety-Nine’s, a women aviator’s professional organization started by Amelia Earhart, Cochran and Cobb recruited another 24 women to submit to Lovelace’s tests.Buoyed by the results, Lovelace received informal approval to commence a second round of tests using military flight training hardware at Langley field. Many of the women dropped out at this point, mostly due to other commitments, and Cobb took to calling the remaining group “The Mercury 13,” a play on “The Mercury 7”.Before this second round of tests could commence, however, the brass found out and pulled the plug. Was this due to sexism? Perhaps, but the simple fact is, Lovelace’s science project was not NASA business nor government business, and the facilities he wanted to use were needed to train the astronauts—of course the plug was pulled.That’s it. Jerry Cobb stated over the years that she felt she’d been cheated. Some of the other woman have stated they thought she saw what she wanted to see. I’ve dug into the records from the time as best I can over the Internet, and the latter view seems to be the better substantiated claim.After the cancellation, Cobb went to the media and tried to enlist the public in having the project resurrected. She and Jane Hart got as far as a meeting with Vice President Johnson, who by all accounts expressed sympathy, then as soon as they were gone, scrolled a terse order “Let’s stop this now.”It’s easy to see this as sexist—as any of many varieties of assholery—but let’s put it in perspective. The nation had just committed itself to a moon landing by the end of the decade—as a battle in a Cold War most saw as an existential threat. NASA and the nation were deep into planning to make it happen, with setbacks and overruns and challenges coming fast and furious.A privately-funded science program was one thing. Jerrie Cobb training alongside the men was quite another. Even if LBJ really was truly sympathetic to her plea, the nation could not afford the distraction—any distraction.And that’s a shame. It’s a shame we were in such a rush to get to the moon that we spent ourselves out of any follow on for the next half century. It’s a shame the only military jet Jerrie Cobb ever got to fly in was as a passenger. It’s a shame that most engineering schools didn’t even start admitting women until the 1960s.But Jerrie and Jane and the others were not cheated of a shot at space—well, not by NASA and not by Randy Lovelace. If they were cheated, it was by an America that saw women as baby machines and beasts of domestic burden, an America in which women like my mother saw no opportunity at all except as hair dresser or phone operator or school teacher.All these ladies bucked those limits, and though they were never realistically going to go into space, they sure inspired those who would come after them, and I hope, those yet to come. We don’t need to embellish the story with made-up government conspiracy. They and their story, are amazing enough.[ Geraldyn M. Cobb March 5, 1931 – March 18, 2019]Gene Nora Jessen, Wally Funk, Jerrie Cobb, Jerri Truhill, Sarah Rutley, Myrtle Cagle and Bernice Steadman, seven members of Lovelace’s study.[NASA’s first group of women astronauts: Kathryn Sullivan, Shannon W. Lucid, Anna L. Fischer, Judith Resnik, Sally K. Ride and M. Rhea Seddon]We still have a long way to go, and not just in space.Addendum: While Jerry Cobb and her fellow test subjects were never candidates for space, the media noise she raised seems to have led directly to the launch of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova. Tereshkova was one of a small group of female cosmonauts trained to go into space after an assistant to program directory Sergei Korolev saw something in the western press about woman in space and thought it important that the USSR launch a woman first to demonstrate the moral superiority of the Soviet system.Unlike Jackie Cobb and the rest of “The Mercury 13” Tereshkova had no qualifications at all other than experience sky-diving. That was enough, however, as the early Soviet space program relied not on test pilots, but patriotic volunteers. Early Vostok space capsules needed (and tolerated) almost no input from the cosmonaut, but they did require skydiving skills—passengers had to bail out before landing.Despite that, there are claims that Korolev was unhappy with her performance and vowed never to launch another women. And true enough, the USSR didn’t launch another woman until 1982—this time to stay ahead of the first actual class of female astronauts.So Jack Cobb’s PR efforts spurred the first woman into space, and her mission amplified the impression that women ought to be in space, which helped open the door to make it happen. Perception is reality is perception.

After a successful PhD in Europe (with 1 first author papers in Nature and Nature Biotech), I returned for a postdoc job. I thought I’d be doing the community a big favor, trying to teach back what I had learnt to the scientific community here. Then maybe I’ll do sth else that I want.I should’ve known. I had to double up as someone who manages the scientific aspect of the project, and the cloud infrastructure for the whole outfit (for about 10–12 people use the cloud at one time). I “co-lead” a project with another postdoc. Towards the end I even “co-supervise” a new team member. Think about how things can go once you have a ship with two captains. And these two captains are not the ultimate captain anyway.I wanted to bring whatever culture that I had learned in Europe here. Of course it doesn’t work out. I told some colleagues not to let their collaborators log in to our cloud to share data – there are other ways to share data much secure ways. I told them privately, openly during meetings, many times (at least 10x total). Still I see foreign IP addresses logging in to the server. At least two times it was hacked by bitcoin miners with Chinese IP addresses.Then there’s the data cleanliness and poor scientific practice. I asked several times to have a final master table to be updated so that the downstream work can be final. I’ve asked maybe 5x. In the end I wasn’t sure if the last analysis that I did was with the final correct master table.I receive personal WhatsApp messages about work at 12–3am in the morning that is not urgent. I’m OK if the lab is on fire and we need to attend to it NOW, but they were never urgent. There are also messages during weekends or during your days off, for example the night before Eid (Muslims’ kind of equivalent to Christmas Eve). In total there are about 15–18 WhatsApp groups during my time, 2–4 is the most active even during weekends (on top of getting personal messages at 12–3am as above).I also get migraines out of nowhere. Body aches, too. My back hurts from sitting at a small table, in a space much smaller than my rented toilet. Just that I can’t flush in front of the computer in a noisy office. I lost some sensation on my left arm, but idk if it’s from the sitting or something else as well. Several times I drove back to the city for tomorrow’s Monday, I had to stop coz suddenly I’m having migraines. Maybe my mind is telling me, you’re driving to killing yourself, why? I had to take MC twice because of maybe same thing. My doctor asks me about these migraines episode, is it because of stress? I can’t be certain it’s from the job, but I’m sure everything else in my life was quite OK except the job.And of course we all want to publish in Nature. I doubted it from the beginning because the data is not Nature level, neither was the story or the conclusions. OK I thought I could help coz I’ve had the experience. We have at least 4 different authors who wants to write it. It was hell. I told my team that better be a bit slow than being wrong. No. We want Nature. Why does it take so long? Don’t mind the small small stuffs. I asked some of the inconsistencies to be fixed first before submitting. Of course it’s never been corrected. At this point I’m already sick (physically, mentally and figuratively) of all these. In the end I merely accept what was written and keep my parts scientifically correct.We submitted to Nature. Rejected in 2 days. I’ve expected it. And to Nature Medicine, and Nature Genetics. I left and I don’t know where the manuscript ended up.Not that I need anymore Nature papers, or papers in general, for myself.All these time I’ve started applying for new jobs 1 year into my postdoc. Almost every week I send out applications. Initially the rejection hurts but after awhile you don’t feel anything anymore. I applied maybe to 60–80 jobs. This in itself is a journey as you reflect what you could offer to the world and what they want out there. I realize I love finance (I read on economics and finance during free time), and cloud computing (I took extra time to study and sit for AWS certifications). I also attended regular meetups on similar topics and get connected with people around these fields.After 2 years, I finally changed job to the banking industry, helping their analytics team to scale their process and move to the cloud.I learned quite a lot, and benefit a lot from this postdoc job. But I was suffering and deeply unhappy.TLDR: Just apply. Every week if not every day. Google related terms such as how to change careers, how to craft your CVs etc. Don’t tell anyone at work about this. Learn about yourself as well and what you can offer. Learn about what people want outside. As you apply, write CV, change CV, go to interview, get rejection, get emails saying you’re qualified the next stage and please do the online assessments, rejected again and again, you’ll evolve your way hopefully in your job search. When your survival at stake, you’ll love reading about job search and related items in the internet.It’s particularly hard for people like me who’ve never been outside of research to navigate the job market, but it can be done!Maybe I should even write a blog or book about this…Addendum:I returned to my home country Malaysia from Austria.I’ve applied to about 90 jobsLinkedin, ~80 jobs:JobStreet, ~10 jobs:There are also other jobs I applied directly via their website or through connections etc.

There was a man in our bible study group who was going through a hard time that my wife and I felt a lot of empathy for.We initially met his wife and two infants at church and they seemed a nice couple. Later we discovered his wife was divorcing him, his business had imploded and he was homeless.At that stage my wife and had read a challenging book by pastor Francis Chan called “Crazy Love”. This book probably ruined my life.The book inspired us to buy a home near my current one to help others. We asked our church friend if he would like to live there and do some home repairs in exchange for rent. His divorce was very hard on him and he needed some time and space to get back on his feet. He was very grateful and our bible study group spent a pleasant Sunday helping him move in and get comfortable.Our friend was unable to hire a lawyer during his divorce so we hired a bulldog that reunited him with his children. Having a place to stay was key for the judge granting him joint custody.We called the house our “handy home” as there were a lot of rooms that we could help others in our church who had short term housing needs.Our friend started to get work as a handy man, helped in the local school his children went too, helped me make props for the sunday school I taught and joined me on my church’s men retreats.During this time period my wife and I renewed our marriage vows at “The Little White Chapel”, threw a giant party for all our friends and had a second honeymoon. The handy man gave a very emotional speech thanking us for all we had done for him and wishing us much happiness for the future.To cut the story short, a few months later my wife said she was pregnant with his child, she divorced me using the lawyer I hired to reunite him with his children and she moved into the handy house, with my children, to live with him and his two children.Obviously this was a big scandal in the church, they were put under church discipline for adultery, and I was totally shocked by how my kindness was repaid and the betrayal of my sweet home schooling Mom of four.ADDENDUMAn interesting legal question came up in the comments section regarding evicting the handyman from the handy house.When my wife divorced me a moveout order was filed on myself as my wife needed the family home to homeschool the children.Logically I thought I would be able to move into my other home up the road. It had 5 rooms and would be perfect for the children to live in when with me.However the handy man refused to leave (even when he promised the church elders he would do so) and I was unable to evict him as I needed my wife to co-sign the eviction notice. This she was unwilling to do as he would lose access to his children.It was presumed I would rent an apartment but all the money in our joint account had been transferred to my wife’s personal account prior to her filing for divorce so I didn’t have a deposit.So, in spite of owning two beautiful homes in an upscale neighborhood, I ended up living out of my car and relying on church friends (for whom I will I will always be grateful) for a bed in the evening.The next chapter in this saga would be to do with my children. My wife had filed for sole custody and, since I had no stable place for them to visit and stay the night, it looked like this was a real possibility. The prospect of losing my marriage and family was a new horror.