Over 650 humans have gone to space, and unsurprisingly, most of them have been men.
While Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to head to space (in 1963), Emily Calandrelli just crossed the milestone of being the 100th woman in space.
Despite Calandrelli standing defiant in the face of online trolls, the reaction to her trip on Blue Origin’s ninth space tourism flight proves you can travel all the way to space and still not escape sexist comments.
However, one survey has even claimed that women are actually ‘better’ in space than men.
A June 2024 report published in Nature Communications suggests that women adapt better to the harsh environment of space.
Christopher Mason, a professor of physiology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, led a team of researchers who looked at how the immune systems of two men and two women reacted when flown around Earth as part of SpaceX Inspiration4 mission in 2021. The data of these civilians was compared to 64 other astronauts.
As well as their bodies adapting better to the stresses of space, the bodies of the women tended to recover quicker when back on Earth. The paper maintains: “Males appear to be more affected by spaceflight for almost all cell types and metrics.”
Gene activity was more disrupted in the male participants, with the protein fibrinogen (needed for blood clotting) being affected. The report adds: “The aggregate data thus far indicates that the gene regulatory and immune response to space flight is more sensitive in males.”
As for why women might be better at adapting to live in space, Mason suggests pregnancy plays a part: “Being able to tolerate large changes in physiology and fluid dynamics may be great for being able to manage pregnancy but also manage the stress of spaceflight at a physiological level.”
This is good news for Calandrelli, who says she wants to see more women in space.
So is the future female? Former NASA engineer and space shuttle program manager Wayne Hale told National Geographic that an all-female crew would likely be lighter and save money, but both sexes come with their drawbacks. Men are apparently less likely to suffer from motion sickness but might be more likely to have hearing and vision problems.
In contrast, women have higher incidences of urinary tract infections and lose more plasma volume.
As National Geographic points out, there might be little reason to send mixed-sex crews to inhabit planets like Mars in the distant future.
You could essentially send an all-female crew and populate the planet through the frozen sperm of men.
With Dr. Shawna Pandya, Kellie Gerardi, and Dr. Norah Patten hoping to fly on Virgin Galactic’s new Delta Class spacecraft as an all-female research crew as early as 2026, female astronauts continue to show they’re just as qualified as the men.
The water in oceans, rivers and lakes would disappear, leaving Earth with no water supply, not to mention that we probably wouldn’t survive.
And in space, were it not for gravity, there would be no planets, stars or even galaxies.
Gravity is what causes all these objects to form in the first place and prevents them from falling apart.
Moreover, the strength of gravity depends on how big the objects are and how far apart they are. As we were taught in schools, gravity is an invisible force that keeps everything grounded: ‘What goes up, must come down.’
But, did you know that it isn’t the lack of gravity in space that makes astronauts float? In fact, it’s the opposite.
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There is actually plenty of gravity in space (quantic69 / Getty Images)
On Earth, gravity pulls objects towards the ground at a speed of 9.8 m/s² – the number is based on Earth’s size and mass. The further away you get from Earth, the weaker its gravity becomes.
And as far out as the International Space Station (ISS) is, it still feels about 90% of Earth’s gravity.
According to Space.com, the ISS is actually located in the thermosphere, a layer of Earth’s atmosphere that begins around 56 miles (90 km) above the surface and stretches up to 310–620 miles (500–1,000 km).
Here, temperatures can get extremely high, but the air is very thin.
For context, the thermosphere sits above the mesosphere, where meteors burn up as they enter because Earth’s gravity pulls them in, causing intense friction with the atmosphere.
In a vacuum, though, things are a little different. All objects fall at the same velocity, something known as ‘free fall.’
Lack of gravity causing astronauts to float in space is a big misconception (NASA / Handout / Getty Images)
This is completely different to the classic feather and brick experiment if you remember from science days.
If a person drops a brick and a feather, air will make the feather fall more slowly. But if there was no air, they would fall at the same speed.
For those in space, as US space agency NASA puts it: “The spacecraft, its crew and any objects aboard are all falling toward but around Earth. Since they are all falling together, the crew and objects appear to float when compared with the spacecraft.”
And, believe it or not, they happen to be moving forward at a pretty fast velocity, 17,500 miles per hour (over 28,000 km per hour) to be exact. This speed perfectly opposes the force of gravity that’s pulling them towards Earth, allowing them to ‘float.’
