X-Prize Funder Will Be First Female Tourist In Space 95
An anonymous reader writes "Reuters has the news that Anousheh Ansari, the funder of the X Prize, has been named as the first female tourist in space. She'll be going up in mid-September after a Japanese entrepeneur was deemed unfit for the trip." From the article: "Ansari, a 39-year-old chairwoman and co-founder of Prodea Systems, Inc., a digital home technology company, will be the world's fourth space tourist. 'Anousheh Ansari has been officially named to the Soyuz TMA-9 primary crew,' Space Adventures, working in partnership with Russia's space agency Roskosmos to launch space tourists, said in a statement."
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it was 1963, you have to make some allowances for the attitudes of the time. Eileen Collins was the first shuttle commander after the Columbia disaster and Ansari will be the 40somthingth woman in space.
KFG
Re:Gotta say it... (Score:2, Informative)
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answer s/970411a.html [nasa.gov]
The Question
(Submitted April 11, 1997)
My first graders want to know, How do astronauts go to the bathroom in space? I think the potty chair is in place. Is this correct?
The Answer
We have come up with a number of answers to your question. We will let you, as the professional teacher, decide which is appropriate for your classroom and what is best left to the teachers lounge.
I. The Official NASA pages:
A. There is a nice space shuttle web page at: http://shuttle.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov] Digging in there I found a Q&A Web page. Here's what it says: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/faq/ living.html [nasa.gov]
6. How do you take a bath, brush your teeth, and go to the bathroom in space?
We do not have a bath or shower on the Shuttle, so we just wash off with wet washcloths, using soaps that you don't have to rinse off. When we brush our teeth, we can either swallow the toothpaste or spit it into a washcloth. Designing a toilet for zero-gravity is tougher. We use air flow to make the urine or feces go where we want, since gravity will not do it for us. You have to be more careful and think about what you are doing with the toilet in the Shuttle.
B. Another colleague pointed out that Johnson Space Center is the home of the astronauts, and they have some web pages dealing with this issue too. (We really know little more than you do about the astronaut program -- but they do.)
Their home page at: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov] has links for KIDS, EDUCATORS, and more.
I went to their page: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/more.html [nasa.gov] and this is what I found:
This used to be under the old FAQ at Spacelink. It has since been removed.
4. HOW DO ASTRONAUTS GO TO THE BATHROOM AND TAKE CARE OF OTHER PERSONAL HYGIENE?
Each Space Shuttle has a toilet that can be used by both men and women. Designed to be as much as possible like those on Earth, the units use flowing air instead of water to move waste through the system.
Solid wastes are compressed and stored on-board, and then removed after landing. Waste water is vented to space, although future systems may recycle it. The air is filtered to remove odor and bacteria and then returned to the cabin.
Astronauts brush their teeth just like they do on Earth. There is no shower on the Shuttle, so astronauts must make do with sponge baths until they return home.
The toilet that was first flown aboard STS-54 is completely new in design and offers new and improved features:
The new toilet features better hygiene, larger storage capacity, greater dependability, and an overall cost savings in maintenance.
-The previous model had a 14-day capacity for storage of waste material. The new model has an unlimited storage capacity.
-The new model features a cylinder system where a plastic bag is placed in the toilet before use. The bag is then sealed and is forced to the bottom of the cylinder after each use by a plunger attached to a lever. A new bag is then placed in the toilet for the next astronaut. When the cylinder is filled, it is replaced by a new cylinder.
-The previous model relied on air flow to pull the waste to a holding tank. None of the waste was separated as it is now. The new system provides better hygiene conditions. There was no way to empty the old system. When it was full, it simply could hold no more waste materials. It had a 14 day capacity.
-The new toilet also provides an odor-free environment. The old model did not.
-The opening in the lid of the toilet was increased from 4" to 8", allowing for easier handling of the plasti
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
In 1963 everything to do with space was A Big Deal.
At the time of Mercury and Gemini a number of women quietly tried out to be astronauts. They did well, but NASA would have absolutely nothing to do with women in space. The 20 year gap between Valentina Tereshkova and Sally Ride included U.S. president Nixon signing legislation mandating equal employment opportunity for all U.S. federal government agencies. There were no exceptions, so NASA was dragged kicking and screaming in to the 20th century.
...laura, who meets Shuttle height requirements but would need to lose some weight