Four female astronauts rendezvous 50 years after first woman in space

[bananas]

Source: The Times (UK)

In the finest display of extraterrestrial girl power to date, four women astronauts are preparing to rendezvous in space nearly 50 years after the Soviet Union put the first woman into orbit.

The $100 billion (£66 billion) International Space Station (ISS) is to host the biggest non-Earth gathering of women, with one arriving on board a Russian Soyuz capsule yesterday and three more due to join her this week.

Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, 34, Stephanie Wilson, 43, and Naoko Yamazaki, 39, are set to launch aboard the shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 6.21am local time today and dock at the ISS on Wednesday, linking up with Tracy Caldwell Dyson, 40.

While their arrival will set a record for the most women in space, the historic nature of the occasion appears to have slipped under the radar at Nasa. “Maybe that’s a credit to the system, right, that I don’t think of it as male or female?” said Bill Gerstenmaier, Nasa’s associate administrator for space operations, who was unaware of the pending milestone until it was pointed out to him at a press conference.

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Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7087600.ece

[CTyankee]

1. Uh, huh. When it's women, it "slips under the radar at Nasa." Great.

And what does THAT tell you....

[onehandle]

2. I think that it's what he said.

It's just going up there now. Male or female.

Should they issue a stamp when we have five females up there?

[Gore1FL]

3. It tells me that womenare great astronauts

Despite all the barriers facing them, these outstanding women have broken through so many glass ceilings that people at NASA don't even give the gender makeup of the missions a second thought. It was noticed when Sally Ride became the First American Woman Astronaut. It's commonplace now for women to command or otherwise serve on the shuttle. This flew under the radar because it didn't seem different than normal. That would be a good thing, as I see it.

[awoke_in_2003]

5. We were behind the soviet union...

on this one. Hell, females even flew fighter planes (and fought on the ground) for the soviet union in WWII

[Gore1FL]

8. I agree on that point

But we aren't now.

And We did beat them in this aspect:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5F7FcwsSRM

!!!!

[Octafish]

4. Wish I was there.

-- Octafish, the lecherous mischievous astronaut.

[cosmicone]

6. I don't think you could do much more in zero gravity and all the space gear than look. n/t

[pinboy3niner]

7. "Extraterrestrial girl power"

How often do you get an opportunity to use THAT in a sentence?

[eppur_se_muova]

9. The Mercury Thirteen now have a Web site, as well as a book ...

http://www.mercury13.com/

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=7-9780375758935-0

[struggle4progress]

10. It's an unfortunate commentary on our culture that the USSR were able

to train and put into orbit a textile worker, Valentina Tereshkova, twenty years before the US stopped pretending women couldn't fly and finally sent Sally Ride into space. It's as if the WASPs of WWII had, by the early sixties, fallen down a memory hole and could not be discussed in polite political company