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Post by max23 on Sept 28, 2015 1:57:37 GMT -5
As the article itself admits, the answer to this question is actually pretty boring. What is interesting is what the first American woman in space, Sally Ride, told an interviewer: ''I remember the engineers trying to decide how many tampons should fly on a one-week flight; they asked, 'Is 100 the right number?''' The engineers were obviously all male, and the only explanation I can come up with is that none of them had wives or girlfriends! www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/09/17/441160250/what-happens-when-you-get-your-period-in-space
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Post by kayo on Sept 28, 2015 16:03:03 GMT -5
Well hold on a second... maybe 100 IS the right number, if you use standard NASA guidelines. American average tampon use per period = 20 but NASA Worst Case factor x 1.5 = 30 + NASA 25% safety factor for losses/defects = 37 + NASA Backup Supply 50% = 53 + NASA duplicate supply = additional 53 Total = 106 tampons for one week
PRE-CYCLE: Deliver rocket to PAD Initiate launch STRING Activate discharge ABSORBTION meter
SEQUENCE: Extend launch TUBE Activate THRUST Verify DOCKING Eject APPLICATION module All systems on standard FLOW chart Monitor CYCLE Eject spent ABSORBER module Repeat as indicated per CYCLE monitor
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Post by padtastic on Oct 4, 2015 17:46:13 GMT -5
While 100 tampons certainly seems pretty comical to us, and flat-out laughable for anyone here on the blue marble, I could understand NASA engineers coming up with 100 as their initial correct number for what could potentially have been an American woman's first period in space. (Remember that while Russia had previously sent women into space, this is the kind of information that they wouldn't want NASA engineers to know about as the Cold War was coming to an end.) With that in mind, it's easy to see NASA compensating for as many outcomes as possible. While we now know that periods in space work like periods on Earth, it could have been reasonably theorized at the time that a tampon of any given absorbancy might not be as effective as it would on Earth, and that micro-gravity could cause periods to behave differently than usual. This in turn would need to be taken into calculation when coming up with the right number of tampons, especially considering that liquid of any kind is one of the most severe threats to the crew of a spacecraft. After it was obvious that periods in space work the same way that they do on Earth, it would make sense to revise the number of tampons that were expected to be needed.
Back when the Cold War was at its peak, the former USSR sent an unmanned rover to the moon. (You'd be forgiven if you've never heard of this, because it only became public knowledge decades after America won the space race.) Not knowing if space or the moon would be cold or hot, the Russians tested this thing at both extremely cold and extremely hot temperatures to ensure that it would function on the moon. While we'd laugh at testing something for functionality in extreme heat that was designed for lunar use, at the time it made sense since nobody knew what the temperature would actually be like. While the rover did make it to the moon, it transmitted only three seconds of footage before failing. In an odd twist of fate, one theory is that some of the material used to shield it from extreme heat may have been damaged by the extreme cold and ultimately lead to its failure. Obviously this is a case where trying to prepare for something didn't work as planned, but if the moon had been hot instead of cold, we'd look at designing a moon rover for cold temperatures as being ridiculous, just the way 100 tampons for a one-week mission in space is ridiculous to us today. It definitely doesn't help that engineers were all male when they come up with a number like that though.
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