Women Are the Future of Space Travel – ELLE.com

Its just as well that Valentina Tereshkova was not around to get her hands on a copy of the June 17, 1963 edition of The New York Times. Tereshkova would not likely have been able to read the Times no matter what, since Western papers didnt much circulate in the Soviet Unionor anywhere else in the Eastern bloc for that matter. But even if they had, Tereshkova would have missed that Times edition: Just the day before, she had lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in what is today the nation of Kazakhstan, aboard her Vostok 6 spacecraft, becoming the 12th personand the first femalein space.

SOVIET ORBITS WOMAN ASTRONAUT, the Times headline read, respectfully enough. The first paragraph maintained the businesslike tone, identifying her as a Junior Lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force. So did the next paragraph, describing how Tereshkova was communicating by radio with fellow cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky, who was also aloft in his Vostok 5 spacecraft. But then things turned sour.

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There was the reference to her in the third paragraph as a heavyset parachutist. There was that business later on about the elegant blue linen dress and stiletto heels she wore when she met the Soviet presswith no corresponding mention of Bykovskys ensemble. There were the quotes from everyday New Yorkers who were asked to respond to Tereshkovas accomplishment.

It only proves one thingthat you cant get away from women no matter where you go, said one passengerglamorously described as an air travelerat New York International Airport, in the days before it was JFK.

They shouldnt send a woman up there alone, said one woman in Times Square. She should have a man with her.

David Pollack/Corbis via Getty Images

History would note that Tereshkova very much did not need a man to circle the Earth 28 times in her own spacecraft, remaining aloft for nearly three days. But that didnt stop tongues from wagging and people from disapproving of the whole idea of a lady astronaut. History would note too that it would be another 20 years, almost to the day, before the U.S. would follow the lead of the U.S.S.R., when Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.

But that was then and this is nowsort of. Just shy of 600 human beings have flown in space, but as of this spring, only 65 of them have been women, according to NASA. Thats not nothing. Women have commanded the space shuttle, commanded the space station; in 2020, astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch conducted the first all-female spacewalk. Whats more, NASAs Artemis lunar program is very explicit in its goal to land the first woman and the next man on the moon by the mid-2020s. And if NASA knows whats smartand NASA usually does know whats smartthe betting here is that that woman will also command the mission.

Sergei Savostyanov

While space explorations past has been largely a male enterpriseespecially in the earliest days, defined by rocket-jock test pilots with their sports cars and groupies and taste for hard-drinkingthe future is likely to be female. NASA tapped 18 astronauts as candidates for the Artemis program and took care to divide them evenly between nine men and nine women. Some of the best-known astronauts of the shuttle and space station era have been women: Americas Peggy Whitsonwho has accumulated 665 days in space over the course of her three missions, the equivalent of a round-trip to Mars; Chiaki Mukai, the first Japanese woman in space; Yi So-yeon, the first Korean woman; Mae Jemison, the first African American woman.

It ought not have to be saidthough in some quarters it is perhaps a necessary reminderthat these and the other five dozen women in space are every bit the cosmic equivalent of their male counterparts. But might they in some ways be better? Might they bring qualities men lack?

Twenty-four men have seen the moon up close and came back to tell us about it. What different perspective might a woman have carried home?

Space Frontiers

I thought so (and still think so) when I was writing my new novel Holdout, about Walli Beckwith, an American astronaut who refuses to come home from the International Space Station when an emergency forces her crewmates to evacuate. Beckwith risks her careerand her lifeto make a stand in space in order to right a grievous wrong taking place on Earth. For the first chapter of the book, Walli was Wally, she was a he. But when I finished writing that chapter I felt oddly dissatisfied, oddly limited; my lead character wanted to be a womanneeded to be a woman, I felt.

I wanted a character who reminded me of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, women who stood up for human rightsand did so without the structural advantages of access to power and influence that men have historically enjoyed. When Wally became Walli, she became richer, more complex, more nuanced, more humane. Her defiant stand became bravermade, as it was, against a system that remains far more patriarchal than matriarchal. And I foundfair or notthat her relationships with the other characters became more layered.

AFP

These same traits might even make women a better choice for long-duration space missions than men are. Emotional intelligence is not the exclusive province of females, but it is often expressed more fully, more consistently by them than it is by men. And thats a quality that will be in deep need as humans try the hard and collaborative business of homesteading the moon or, even more remotely and challengingly, Mars.

There is a certain kind of reverse bias in framing women as the more compassionate, intuitive, interpersonally adept gender. There are obtuse women and empathic men; selfish women and selfless men. There is cowardice in both genders and courage in both. And all of this is just assigned-at-birth gender. None of it even takes into consideration the rainbow of traits found across the arc of more fluid genders.

Still, as with so many other things, space has been an overwhelmingly mens game long enough. It was a mens game this summer in the bro-billionaire competition between Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos to be the first to make their suborbital jaunts. It was a mans game when space was a proxy war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., fighting for the celestial high ground. It was a mans game in the decades after. Neil Armstrong, bless him, gave us his historic but stilted One small step statement. Might there have been something more lyrical from a woman? Twenty-four men have seen the moon up close and came back to tell us about it. What different perspectiveabout the nature of humanity, the imperative to exploremight a woman have carried home with her?

Were finding out slowly, and well find out more as ever greater numbers of women take their place inand stake their claim tospace. From my small earthbound perspective, I can only say Im glad I made Wally a Walli. I had more to give the character than I otherwise would haveand I learned more from her, too.

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Women Are the Future of Space Travel - ELLE.com