Women are lighter and thus cost less than men to transport to space, they’re less prone to heart attacks, and they do better in isolation tests, reasoned Randy Lovelace when he founded the Women In Space Earliest program in 1959 to test women for their “qualifications as astronauts,” as this Wired article reports. Female astronaut candidates in the program outscored men in several areas, including sensory deprivation tests, where women beat what was once thought of as the six-hour limit of tolerance by four hours. So why were there no females on Apollo 11? NASA officials were concerned, among other things, about women’s inexperience flying experimental military aircraft (due to being barred from the Air Force) and also about menstruation. [%comments]
Why It Wasn't a Small Step for Women
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I doubt if it had anything at all to do with Mensuration.
It probably had more to do with the Space Program being military drive. The military back then (as it is in many countries today) was largely an empire of male chauvinists.
A very similar question can be asked about the number of women who receive the Noble prize in the sciences. Not enough women were allowed to peruse serious research in a male dominated academic environment (there are Noble exceptions e.g. Curie and her two prizes). More recently we have seen many more women recipients. Their entry into academics was at a time when the male domination was facing it’s first wave of resistance. After 2020 I am willing to predict that the majority of prizes will go to women.
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If weight is a primary concern, then why not staff all of our space program with people afflicted with dwarfism?
That should save tons of weight.
Sheesh.
Or perhaps maybe it had something to do with… SEXISM? No, that wouldn’t happen in the 1950s.
I recommend you get a copy of The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of American Women and the Dream of Space Flight by Martha Ackmann.
Speaking of flying weight, why shouldn’t lighter people, notably women, pay less for plane tickets? I got to thinking about this a few years ago when my family was threatened with a fee for an overweight checked bag. My wife solved that by taking a heavy object out and putting it in her carry-on. Net effect on payload weight: zero. It took my daughter, then 12 or so, to point out how obviously nutty that process was. But even though we sweat over such slight baggage weight issues, an 90-pound adult pays as much as the largest person who can fit in the seat.
You all are assuming the step for women has been small–not giant.
Anand Bala –
And yet, the entire reason Neil Armstrong was chosen to be the first man on the moon was that he was a civilian. And when Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, the Soviets didn’t hail their own equality – they crowed that their space capsules were so well-designed that even a woman could pilot them (presumably because there were no Geico commercials back then).
Sure, the lack of women in the space program was chauvinistic, but it wasn’t military chauvinism. It was just good ol’ fashioned regular chauvinism.
NASA can figure out how to get to the moon, but not the menstrual cycle?
I asked about my overweight bag issue at the counter as I was checking in, and it was a deterrent for avoiding baggage handling related injury. Just because you can drag your 55lb bag from the curb to the counter once, doesn’t mean everyone in LAX can do it all day.