Analysis: NASA has an awkward history with the whole women-in-space thing
By Gillian Brockell Gillian Brockell Staff writer for Retropolis Email Bio Follow March 28 at 2:55 PM History was supposed to be made Friday with the first all-female spacewalk at the International Space Station. On Monday, NASA announced it was scrapping that plan. Why? Because they didn’t have enough space suits designed for smaller frames that typically characterize the female body.
In the wake of this less-than-interstellar end to Women’s History Month, a 2018 tweet from the NASA History Office has re-orbited, indicating the agency has historically had some other issues with the whole women-in-space thing. — NASA History Office January 16, 2018 Below is a photo of Kathryn D. Sullivan, the first female astronaut to go on a spacewalk, on Oct. 11, 1984. Can you tell if she is wearing space makeup or not?
“Tampons were packed with their strings connecting them, like a strip of sausages, so they wouldn’t float away. Engineers asked Ride, ‘Is 100 the right number?’ She would be in space for a week. ‘That would not be the right number,’ she told them.”And when Ride disembarked with the rest of her crew after her first space flight, the NASA protocol office presented her with a bouquet of flowers. She refused to accept them.
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