 The tests were conducted at the Wright Air Development Center in Dayton, Ohio, by USAF Brigadier General Donald Flickinger.Flickinger, and his mentor Randy Lovelace (the bioastronautics pioneer who performed the medical selection of the Mercury Seven), had a far-reaching interest in research on the suitability of women as astronauts.However, no official records of the Air Research and Development Command, the experimental wing of the Air Force trying to get America into space, survive to document how or why this came about.