In 1947, Marion Dietrich and her sister Janet entered the inaugural Chico-to-San Mateo Air Race[clarification needed] and took first place, defeating experienced men.
Dietrich worked for a time as a newspaper reporter for the Oakland Tribune, flying supersonic as a passenger in a fighter aircraft on a story assignment.
In 1960, Dietrich and her sister were among a select group of female aviators invited to the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, where experts had screened potential NASA astronauts.
The women underwent the same medical tests and examinations as Alan Shepard, John Glenn, and the other men who eventually traveled into space.
It would be two more decades before the United States launched its first woman into space, Sally Ride, an astrophysicist turned astronaut.