First All Female Spacewalk Cancelled Due To The Ultimate Wardrobe Malfunction?

Although the exploration of humanity’s final frontier has been made as inclusive as possible, is there a lingering sexism that exists when it comes to space exploration?

By: Ringo Bones

The scheduled Extra-Vehicular-Activity was never planned as a historic mission, although it would have been a historic moment: as in the first ever all-female spacewalk. Sadly, that historic moment would have to wait, as NASA said back in Monday, March 25, 2019, because of a somewhat mundane issue – lack of appropriate spacesuit sizes. The two astronauts who were scheduled to walk together in space back in Friday, March 22, 2019 – Anne C. McClain and Christina H. Koch – would both need to wear a medium-size torso component (as in a medium-sized spacesuit), but only one was readily available at the International Space Station at the time. That Friday, the two woman astronauts would have ventured outside of the ISS on a six-hour mission to install massive lithium-ion batteries that will help power the research laboratory. Unfortunately, it will be rescheduled this Friday, March 29, with Christina Koch along with her fellow astronaut Nick Hague as Anne McClain already performed her scheduled EVA last week.

Even though Anne McClain had performed a previous EVA wearing a large-size torso spacesuit, on her last EVA on March 22 she wore a medium-size torso and learned that it fit her better. Christina Koch also uses a medium-size torso spacesuit. A proper fitting spacesuit for EVA missions is very important because these missions could last from 6 to 8 and sometimes extended to 12 hours. And there’s pre-breathing involved before any astronaut an go on an EVA because current NASA spacesuit technology aren’t strong and flexible enough to work with a oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere pressurized to the same level of the interior of the International Space Station which is equivalent of standing on 8,000 feet above sea level here on Earth – which is around 11.3 pounds per square inch. A typical NASA spacesuit, in order to maintain flexibility and safety, can only be pressurized by up to around 2 to 3 pounds per square inch – which is akin to breathing pure oxygen while staying 40,000 feet above sea level here on Earth. This means lengthy pure oxygen pre-breathing time (17 to 20 minutes?) before an EVA mission to flush out excess nitrogen from the astronauts system.

Even though it is seldom mentioned in the mainstream press, the powers-that-be in charge of access to space since the 1960 can be quite sexist in comparison to our “post hash-tag me too movement” world. Even though the then Soviet Union were the first to sent the first woman in space, as in Valentina Tereshkova back in June 16, 1963, it took the then Soviet Union almost twenty years later to send the world’s second woman in space – Svetlana Savitskaya – in 1982, citing that women can be bad luck for the male cosmonauts. And as recently as April 18, 2008, the Russian space agency blamed Peggy Whitson for sending the Soyuz spacecraft 450 kilometers off course during the team’s return from the International Space Station. Even though many have said NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson should have been commended for her quick thinking by avoiding the Soyuz from landing in a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan back then.