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Zach Weinersmith

@ZachWeiner

20 Dec

Let's talk about the space-tampon story. OK, so this is a story confirmed by Sally Ride and Kathy Sullivan, where a male engineer asks if 100 tampons is good for one week, and she politely tells him he can go a lot lower. Very often repeated, and true so far as it goes. BUT

In an interview by Weitekamp with Rhea Seddon, the only MD among the women in that class, she said she was actually consulted on the decision! She said they ended up with a big number out of concern about microgravity effects and due to the NASA approach to redundancy.

Microgravity concerns were not unreasonable. In Sally Ride's biography by Sherr, she discusses how the first woman who actually had to use the tampons in space had issues with "capillary action." Space is horrible.

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Zach Weinersmith

@ZachWeiner

20 Dec

Another weird space history thing. The more I read the more I think Eisenhower was totally right about manned space. Not worth the cost, but if you're gonna do it, make it a public facing civilian agency.

The usual argument you see is that Ike didn't "get" human spaceflight, then JFK comes in and sees the light. But Eisenhower thought it was gonna be a huge boondoggle that would produce propaganda, but little science for the cost. That seems to me to be basically right.

Eisenhower also worried that you'd end up with a sort of permanent war-time economy by routing so much government money to missiles, even for peaceful purposes. That too seems to me to have been correct. Thoughts?

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Zach Weinersmith

@ZachWeiner

20 Dec

So, in space psychology, a very often repeated story is that when the two Russians did a spacewalk, they taped over a bunch of switches so Lucid wouldn't touch them. I actually have this in a current draft of our Space Book. But... Lucid doesn't mention it ever happening?

In fact, the closest thing she mentions is that Yuri Onufriyenko said not to mess with the comm setup during the EVA, since it was set a certain way. She then JOKED about taping over it. In fact, the crew, according to her anyway had high morale, little/no acrimony.

In several places, she talks about not wanting to be left out because she's female. So, if the taped switches story were true, you'd think she'd mention it.

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Zach Weinersmith

@ZachWeiner

19 Dec

This is kinda funny. Astronaut Shannon Lucid went to Space Station Mir for 6 months. During that time she had both American and Russian space food, the latter of which had canned casseroles, usually of meat and potatoes. Of all the foods, American and Russian, these were her fav.

The reasoning: "I liked them because they were a little greasy and hence the most like 'normal food.'"

Have I mentioned that Lucid grew up in the US South?

More fun stuff - Lucid hated doing exercise. Mostly because it was boring, but also because the clothing was too thin. She recalled thinking: “Oh my goodness. I can’t let anyone see me like this! After all, I am a grown woman and not some cute teenager!”

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Zach Weinersmith

@ZachWeiner

19 Dec

One of the odd things researching Space History is the treatment of JFK. Unusually for a politician, in the context of space, people almost exclusively quote from his public speeches, particularly his famous ones before Congress and at Rice University. This is pretty generous.

In fact, in private talks with advisors he frequently said stuff quite contrary to his public pronouncements. He would've happily done something more useful than manned space travel (he mentions desalinization more than once), but it wouldn't work as propaganda.

I don't have my notes in front of me, but I believe Jerome Wiesner said that they couldn't do anything but rockets because things like desalinization didn't display military strength. Not exactly the "boundless frontier" mentality.

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Zach Weinersmith

@ZachWeiner

18 Dec

I'm on ~my 20th astronaut memoir and my overarching conclusion is that the optimal modern astronaut is a combo of extreme competence and being incredibly boring, which helps with long-duration endurance. Shannon Lucid's memoir is the greatest embodiment of this.

Her stories about training and flying on Mir literally reads like it's your Mom giving you a slide show of her trip to Russia one time. She talks about how maps are neat and how she found a nice little church to attend. She's very fond of lemon drops.

When she arrives on Mir, the two cosmonauts give her a mirror because "We thought that maybe you would like a mirror since you are a woman." She is, in fact, quite appreciative of the mirror. Later, she orders Jell-o to be sent up for the boys.

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