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Amy Shira Teitel

Biography

Amy Shira Teitel

Amy Shira Teitel is a spaceflight historian, author and public speaker who, much like her subjects, is one of the few academically trained young women in her field. She earned a bachelor’s degree with combined honors in history of science and technology and classics, as well as a master’s in science and technology studies before leaving academia for popular science writing. She has since written for more than two dozen websites, including the BBC and Time magazine online, earned a Group Achievement Award from NASA as part of the New Horizons mission to Pluto team, and appears frequently as an expert interviewee in a number of TV shows and documentaries. She also maintains her blog, Vintage Space, and its companion YouTube channel.

Amy Shira Teitel

Books by Amy Shira Teitel

by Amy Shira Teitel - Biography, History, Nonfiction

When the space age dawned in the late 1950s, Jackie Cochran held more propeller and jet flying records than any pilot of the 20th century --- man or woman. She had led the Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots during the Second World War and was the first woman to break the sound barrier. Yet it was Jerrie Cobb, a record-holding pilot in her own right, who finagled her way into taking the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts. The prospect of flying in space quickly became her obsession. While the American and international media spun the shocking story of a "woman astronaut" program, Jackie and Jerrie struggled to gain control of the narrative, each hoping to turn the rumored program into their own ideal reality --- an issue that ultimately went all the way to Congress.