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Female Astronaut Sets Space Record
Raver32 writes to tell us that U.S. astronaut Sunita 'Suni' Williams has set a record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman. Breaking the previous record of 188 days set by astronaut Shannon Lucid in '96, Williams has lived aboard the space station since last December. "'It's just that I'm in the right place at the right time,' Williams, 41, said when Mission Control in Houston congratulated her on the record. 'Even when the station has little problems, it's just a beautiful, wonderful place to live.'"
If we had a decent launch capability, nobody would be spending that long up there. Things like this happen because of launch delays, not because anybody is supposed to spend that long on a mission.
The record is held by Valeriy Polyakov, who spent 431 days on Mir. He had the unfortunate experience of being up while the USSR was coming apart.
What struck me upon reading the article was the passage that mentioned women in zero gravity stop ovulating after two to three months. I think this may have serious implications for long-term human space travel.
But that's just statistics. If you compare black men to white men there will be a similar difference, it just won't be as pronounced. That goes for just about any generalisation you can make about women and men -- they talk different (so do black and white people), they dress different (so do black and white people), they eat different foods (so do black and white people), they listen to different music (so do black and white people), they watch different movies (so do black and white people), they have different body features (so do black and white people), they have different susceptibilities to disease (so do black and white people), they have different crime rates (so do black and white people), et cetera. The only differences are the degree and the fact that people inexplicably care more when something is different across sexes rather than across races or nationalities or eye colours.
The fact that women will never be first place in bench-pressing doesn't bother me at all. You probably won't either. That doesn't mean we should invent some fictional prerequisites to give you a better chance at recognition (world bench press record for people named [insert your name] who live in [insert your state/province/whatever]).