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Liu Yang Becomes China's First Female Astronaut
China launched Saturday a rocket bearing three astronauts and an experimental orbiting module intended to presage a full-fledged space station at the end of this decade. While that's big news in itself, the launch also marks the first trip for a female Chinese astronaut. The BBC has a brief video, including part of a pre-launch press conference introducing 33-year-old astronaut Liu Yang, as well as her crewmates.
An astronaut is american. A cosmonaut is russian. A spationaut is french. And a chineese person in the sky is a taïkonaute.
As of 2012, fifty-six women have flown in space, out of 525 total space travelers. By country of origin: 1 each from China, France, UK, South Korea; 2 each from Canada and Japan, 3 from Soviet Union/Russia, and 45 from the United States.
Congrats on joining the few members of the "50 mile high club", but I'll be a lot more impressed when the chinese get those people into a stable earth orbit and then return, not just breathe the thin air and then fall back... regardless of the sexual organs present in the cockpit. -_-
So is 10 days not a stable enough orbit for you :)
from the report:
The crew will stay in space for more than 10 days, during which time they will perform scientific experiments and the country’s first manual space docking — a complicated procedure that brings two vessels together in high-speed orbit.
One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure.
Was there something about being a woman that made it problematic being in space
you mean besides the monthly "make no sense, freak everyone out" day? no, i don't think there's any difference.
my sig pwns your sig
I think that's the point: there is no reason why there shouldn't have been women doing it all along. So it's notable when the status quo changes.
I am not sure why it matters that she's the first female astronaut.
It matters to those of us trying to raise daughters. They need as many role models as we can give them. I want my daughter to ask for a lunch box with a picture of Liu Yang or Sally Ride, and not the "Disney Princesses".
SO special!
Don't they realize that highlighting this as special is sexism?
In a non-sexist mind, this is just a normal thing, and in no way special.
And as long as we don't stop nonsense as this, sexism won't stop.
This June 16th is also the 49th anniversary of Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova's trip to space. She was the first woman in space. She piloted the Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963, to become both the first woman and the first civilian to fly in space.
ok, why is it worth noting? if gender is just anatomy and doesn't matter, then it's unremarkable either way whether women are/are not involved.
This Liu Yang is surely a good astronaut, but as the news about this launch is more than half about having a woman on boars, makes me wonder what the real reason is to chose her over one of the other candidates they have.
This is one of the burdens pioneering women have placed on them: people are always second-guessing them, wondering whether they got their position on the merits or if are being given special treatment because they are women. Minorities often get a similar response ("oh s/he only got the job because of affirmative action"). Hence the saying "you've got to be at least twice as good as anyone else to be accepted as equal".
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
you mean besides the monthly "make no sense, freak everyone out" day? no, i don't think there's any difference.
If you think men's behavior isn't influenced by hormones, you are wrong:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2012/06/13/why-male-hormones-may-drive-the-stock-market-and-override-investors-ability-to-think-rationally/
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I bet there will soon be an African-Canadian Jewish Bisexual Amputee as well!
To be serious - this "The first WOMAN!!!" or "The first BLACK DUDE!!!" to do X really annoys me. Yeah, we get it, people of all genders and nationalities and heritages can do the same stuff. No big surprise - we're all human.
Does anyone else find these articles degrading and unnecessary?
No, she's the first Chinese female astronaut, which means that half an hour after she takes off, you have to launch another one.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The flight is to test a manual docking procedure and she's one of the experts in operating that system. She started her astronaut training 14 years ago, so she was chosen as a potential astronaut way back then.
Why assume that she was chosen for any other reason? The press is going to make a huge deal about it no matter what the reason because a female face in space sells advertising space - however they don't get to make the call, especially not in China.
I do not second-guess any women on the Shuttle missions.
I do second-guess this case because the news about this rocket launch is literally >50% "we got a woman in space" and There is no reason to me this woman would not be as good as their male counterparts. She used to be a fighter pilot, so has a proven track record in another high-demand job. It's just how the news overly focusses on having a woman in space that makes me suspect that the selection criteria for this mission included "must include a female".
It is almost like if you would report on the first Apollo moon missions as "we got a man in space, and outside of orbit! Oh yeah they also touched down on the moon. This man is fantastic, his family is great, he worked so hard to get in space and put evreything aside. His wife and kid followed the launch at home."
Now what is the important part: a man/woman in space, or the exploratory and scientific reach and objectives of the space mission?
Rank Country (or dependent territory) Prisoners per 100,000 population
1 United States 730 ICPS
2 St. Kitts and Nevis 649 ICPS
3 U.S. Virgin Islands (USA) 539 ICPS
4 Georgia 536 ICPS
5 Russia 522 ICPS
6 Seychelles 507 ICPS
7 Anguilla (UK) 480 ICPS
8 Rwanda 450 ICPS (c.)
9 British Virgin Islands (UK) 439 ICPS
10 Bermuda (UK) 428 ICPS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
Especially if they're wearing trashy Frank Frazetta outfits.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The US regularly had/has females their crew, and the gender of an astronaut is pretty much a non-issue.
Well, at least starting 1983 they did. Of course, there's those pesky 22 years where there were no women, but that's another story...
According to legend, the issue was that all of engineers were male and none of them really knew how to create a system for handling women peeing. The more likely reason was that most astronauts were combat pilots and, at the time, women weren't allowed. Sally Ride was never in the military.
Oh My Fscking God!! How inspiring could one woman be?????
If you didn't grow up in Soviet Union, you'll never know for real. But, yes, she was very inspiring to millions of Soviet girls. Which was pretty much the point.
Austronaut
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
If you think men's behavior isn't influenced by hormones, you are wrong
Not wrong, just could be, maybe wrong. The researchers noticed hormone changes and assumed that men wouldn't think rationally as a result. They might even be right. Although I can't help but think that any trader who's been active for a few years probably has figured out how to cope.
Why? What's wrong with Disney princesses? Did little boys who wanted /Miami Vice/ lunch boxes really want to be undercover narcotics agents with stupid clothing and bad hair?
What's wrong is that if those little boys really did want to be undercover narcotics agents with stupid clothing and bad hair, they could have done that. No matter what you do and no matter how hard you work, you are never going to be a princess.
Who cares, if the end result is that many more girls figured they could try their luck in fields they wouldn't have considered before because of cultural conditioning?
The history of women astronauts in NASA is a fascinating one. The US women astronaut candidates dealt with all of the tests as well as their male counterparts, they were lighter, smaller, as a result more suitable to the cramped conditions of the Mercury capsule and its launcher's very limited load capability where every kg counted. Then from the top it came, the astronauts can only be jet fighter pilots and guess, there were none of those in the "wrong" sex. It was the Shuttle era, 20 odd years later, when the first American woman managed to become an Astronaut. Russians, on the other hand, managed to get one up in the air pretty quickly (for propaganda reasons, obviously) and then the next woman Russian astronaut had to wait a while too.
The history of women in space can be summarised in one sentence: it sucks to be you.
Hopefully it will change and get better, there were women shuttle commanders.
Not all women are thus affected, and men in space have similar issues with feeling horny and frustrated on a much more regular basis. Part of the psychological evaluation all astronauts undergo is to evaluate their susceptibility to those issues and to see how suppressant medication works.
Come on guys, drag yourselves into the 21st century.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Sure, because everyone (except those in the Soviet space program) thought that she actually *did something* besides sit there.
At least Our Guys had control sticks even though they were mainly for emergencies.
Spacecraft orientation maintenance and orbital control was actually not entirely automated on the Vostok: Thereskova had to do that manually based on info from her onboard instruments and groundcontrol feedback. So you are just being petty here. The Soviet Union launched a woman into space within 2 years of their first manned flight. The US did so only 22 years after their first manned flight.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
which brings an interesting question... can astronauts really spend long times in space (months or maybe over a year) without any sexual thinking at all? i mean... at some point, if you do.. you have to unload... uhm.. are they allowed to?
my sig pwns your sig
Russians, on the other hand, managed to get one up in the air pretty quickly (for propaganda reasons, obviously) and then the next woman Russian astronaut had to wait a while too.
Of course, if USSR does anything -- it is for propaganda reasons, if USA -- it is for the benefit of humanity.
Your statements are the perfect illustration of the fact that American propaganda is even more pervasive than Soviet one.
If you are referring to the Radical Right talking point of the Community Reinvestment Act, which required mortgage lenders not to discriminate against qualified buyers, it was passed in 1977. That's a heck of a delayed reaction there as compared to, I dunno, the Gramm family's work in repealing Glass-Steagall in 1999.
sPh
The United States, of course, would never stoop to such tactics. (hint: next time you are at a big airshow stop by the US Air Force recruiting booth and evaluate the attractiveness of the pilots working there, both male and female. Do you really think every USAF pilot looks that good?)
sPh
As I understand it, no scars and perfect teeth are also because you don't want your scars to open in zero-g (including C-section scars) and you can't have a root canal filling or exploding fillings (because of air pocket) in space. I read a while ago that the astronauts and cosmonauts for the ISS also get a dental check-up before they're allowed to launch.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
That only China and Russia (two countries that aren't exactly friendly to the US) are the only ones capable of putting humans in earth orbit at the moment? I know that I would, considering that US satellites fix themselves up there.
I'm hoping that the next US president will feel the same way (whoever they are), and we can get a good old fashioned space race restarted. It would be nice to see US scientists and engineers working on something more important than developing an better iPhone for a change.
China is only slightly ahead of private spaceflight, which makes it hard for me to be impressed. Give it 3 or 4 years, and private companies will be able to do more impressive stuff than China. At that point, it will just be a matter of having enough money (it's not much more than that now, really).
That, and launching women into space isn't actually any more difficult than launching men (you have to design the spacesuits a little differently, but that's trivial). When the first women were launched into space, it was a triumph for equality, but sexism isn't really China's biggest problem (well, not after birth, any way).
Hate to break it to you snowflake, but so was everyone, and they still are. Female astronaut in Socialist Dictatorship of China is not free!
Scars are generally tougher than the surrounding tissue, and I wasn't aware exploding teeth were a major mountaineering hazard. Sounds like PR to me.
which brings an interesting question... can astronauts really spend long times in space (months or maybe over a year) without any sexual thinking at all? i mean... at some point, if you do.. you have to unload... uhm.. are they allowed to?
Maybe that's why she's there?
(before the mods slay me, you have to admit it's the elephant in the room)
I thought Your Guys had control sticks mainly to assuage their egos.
That was the problem, yes. The space program basically needed warm bodies in good health to sit in a sealed up tin can without freaking out excessively over the danger. The air force pilots they tapped for that had those qualities, but were primarily pilots. They were all essentially overqualified for the job. There is a (dramatized, obviously) scene from the movie _The Right Stuff_ where the pilots demand a window and manual controls. While the movie is just a movie, it is somewhat based on reality.
Although not as high as some Western countries, crime rate in China should be considered as "High"
But there is one big different between China and those so-called "Western countries"
Unlike in Western countries, where criminals are "protected" by the laws, crime victims in China often take the law in their own hand and punish the perpetrators - sometimes killing the criminals\
And that has nothing to do with Confucianism - "Confucianism" is but an obsolete piece of cultural artifact
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !