DailyDirt: Women In Spaaaaace....

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Aug 6th 2013 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Over fifty women have flown in space so far, but that's only about 10% of the total number of people who have physically left the planet. It's not easy to become an astronaut (or cosmonaut or taikonaut...), but when humans go into space nowadays, the ratio of women-to-men is slightly better than it used to be. This year marked a couple anniversaries for female space travelers, and hopefully, there will be more manned missions in the future for everyone.

Valentina Tereshkova isn't a name most people in the US remember, but she was the first woman to fly into space -- 20 years before the first American woman would. Fifty years ago, Tereshkova orbited our planet 48 times over 3 days. [url]
Sally Ride was the first American woman to go into space thirty years ago. Ride went up aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, and she is often mistaken to be the first woman to travel to space. [url]
In 1962, NASA wasn't even thinking about training female astronauts -- as evidenced by rejection letters sent to aspiring women who wanted a chance to escape the Earth's full gravity. These rejection letters were apparently not uncommon, and Hillary Rodham Clinton even received one when she was a teenager. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: anniversary, astronauts, cosmonauts, first, rejection letters, sally ride, space, taikonauts, valentina tereshkova, women
Companies: nasa

9 Comments

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The First Word

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and Barbie

I thought for sure you were going to mention the new astronaut Barbie.

—Nina Paley

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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2013 @ 5:36pm

Anniversary for Curiosity, too
It's been a year since we put a big robot on Mars... but no one cares about droids.
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Pixelation, 6 Aug 2013 @ 6:31pm

We can't even go into space to get time away from them...
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2013 @ 7:16pm

I've got your women in space right here...

http://lasvegas.craigslist.org/stp/3985230836.html

http://imgur.com/0bExCl4

Laughed my ass off.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2013 @ 7:49pm

Woman voice recording from space
Something for you to find, but very sad, one of the first female's in space, something bad goes wrong, there is a fire and a female voice calling for help, and describing the situation.

Probably the first person in space.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2013 @ 7:55pm

or the women who died in space, we'll before the US sent anyone up, but it was CENSORED by USSR..

Much like Masnick does here now, he censored the person, not the message..
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- AC Unknown (profile), 6 Aug 2013 @ 7:59pm
  
  Re:
  Spam filter, dumbass. You spam the same shit, your message gets held in moderation.
  
  Even I'm not immune to the spam filter.
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Nina Paley (profile), 6 Aug 2013 @ 8:41pm

and Barbie
I thought for sure you were going to mention the new astronaut Barbie.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
VE3OAT, 7 Aug 2013 @ 12:24am

I remember
*I* remember Valentina Tereshkova. Yeah, I'm that old.
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Aargh63, 7 Aug 2013 @ 11:24am

Hillary
Yes, I'm certain she applied to be an astronaut, just like she dodged sniper fire in Sarajevo and was named after Sir Edmund Hillary!
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