Jacqueline Cochran, the first woman to break the sound barrier, established more hying speed, distance and altitude records than any other man or woman of her time. For her work as head of the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) in World War II, she won the Distinguished Service Medal. She was passionate about women in space. “I would like to predict that women will go into space by December 17, 1963—which is 60 years to the day after the Wright brothers first hew—but probably within six or seven years would be more realistic.” (She was about 20 years off; Sally Ride was the first woman astronaut in space in 1983).

In Parade, Cochran made the case that females could be jet pilots or astronauts. Jan and Marion Dietrich, the twins on the magazine’s cover, were part of a volunteer program testing that notion at the Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research. The California sisters were qualified pilots who held a Federal Aviation Agency instrument rating and passed the same kind of endurance and tilt table stress tests that male astronauts do. While women were not being considered for astronaut or jet pilot jobs at the time (the magazine reported that the government deemed it too expensive to train women whose hying careers are likely to be interrupted by marriage and children), Cochran hoped this volunteer program was a “launching pad” for that to change.