SHINE: How To Survive And Thrive At Work

At the time I wondered how her beauty had played in her passage through the wickets of life to become an astronaut; wickets that, for the most part, had been male tended. Had she been waved through some of those gates because her smile had melted a professor or perhaps her dynamite body had influenced a male astronaut sitting on the selection committee? We males are suspicious of female beauty because we know ourselves too well. But, over the years, Judy had proven she wasnБЂ™t an astronaut because of her sex appeal or because of an abuse of the affirmative action program. She was an astronaut because she was qualified to be one. I had watched her fly formation from the backseats of T-38s and lead instrument approaches in bad weather and do it as well as me (and my backseat fighter and T-38 time had made me a damned fine instrument pilot). I had seen her expertly operate the robot arm. I had watched her rappel off the side of the orbiter mock-up in our emergency training, parasail into the water in our survival training, work 20 feet underwater in a 300-pound spacesuit ...»