Women Spacefarers

This book tells the fascinating stories of the valiant women who broke down barriers to join the space program. Beginning with the orbital flight of USSR cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova in 1963, they became players in the greatest adventure of our time. The author contextualizes their accomplishments in light of the political and cultural climate, from the Cold War in the background to the changing status of women in society at large during the Seventies. The book includes the biographies of, and in some cases interviews with, the sixty women who flew in space in the first half century of space history. It reports their achievements and some little known details. The result is a gallery of pioneering women who reached for the stars: women who, with exceptional skill, hard work, and dedication, reached impressive careers as accomplished pilots, researchers, and engineers; many are now in high level managerial positions both at NASA or in public and private organizations, and all left a legacy of strength.

This book is the second edition of Women Spacefarers and tells the fascinating stories of the valiant women who broke down barriers to join the space program. Beginning with the orbital flight of USSR cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and continuing to the present day, it covers the many female players who have had a central role in the greatest adventure of our time. The book includes the biographies of, and in some cases interviews with, the brave women who have flown in space. For each entry, the author contextualizes the spacefarer's accomplishments in light of the political and cultural climate of the time. The second edition features fifteen additional profiles on figures such as Jessica Meir and Wally Funk; new interview material; a new thematic structure based on each woman's science specialty and role; an expanded glossary; and more. The result is a gallery of pioneering women who reached for the stars: women who, with exceptional skill, hard work, and dedication, reached impressive careers as accomplished pilots, researchers, engineers and managers, and left a legacy of strength for all aspiring spacefarers.

Looks at the efforts and accomplishments of some of the first women in space, including Jerrie Cobb, Mae Jemison, Sally K. Ride, Valentina Tereshkova, and Eileen Collins.

The recent 50th anniversaries of the first human spaceflights by the Soviet Union and the United States, and the 30th anniversary of the launching of the first U.S. Space Shuttle mission, have again brought to mind the pioneering accomplishments of the first quarter century of humans in space. Historians, political scientists and others have extensively examined the technical, programmatic and political history of human spaceflight from the 1960s to the 1980s, but work is only beginning on the social and cultural history of the pioneering era. One rapidly developing area of recent scholarship is the examination of the images of spacefarers in the media, government propaganda and popular culture. How was space travel imagined in the visual media on the cusp of human spaceflights? How were astronauts and cosmonauts represented in official and quasi-official media portraits? And how were those images reproduced and transformed by in the imagination of film-makers, movie producers, popular writers, and novelists? Spacefarers addresses these questions with nine contributions from scholars in the field of aerospace history, Russian and American history, and English literature. These essays are preceded by an introduction by the editor, who discusses their place in the historiography of spaceflight and social and cultural history. The book will have potential appeal to a wide variety of scholars in history, literature and the social sciences and will include a number of striking visual images.

Over the years, a large body of knowledge has developed regarding the ways in which space flight affects the health of the personnel involved. Now, for the first time, this clinical knowledge on how to diagnose and treat conditions that either develop during a mission or because of a mission has been compiled by Drs. Michael Barratt and Sam L. Pool of the NASA/Johnson Space Center. Complete with detailed information on the physiological and psychological affects of space flight as well as how to diagnose and treat everything from dental concerns to decompression to dermatological problems encountered, this text is a must have for all those associated with aerospace medicine.

When Valentina Tereshkova blasted off aboard Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963, she became the first woman to rocket into space. It would be 19 years before another woman got a chance—cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982—followed by American astronaut Sally Ride a year later. And by breaking the stratospheric ceiling, these women forged a path for many female astronauts, cosmonauts, and mission specialists to follow. In Women in Space, author Karen Bush Gibson profiles 23 pioneers, all of whom achieved greatness in orbit. Read about Eileen Collins, the first woman to command the Space Shuttle; Peggy Whitson, who has logged more than a year in orbit aboard the International Space Station; Mae Jemison, the first African American woman in space; as well as astronauts from Japan, Canada, Italy, South Korea, France, and more. Learn, too, about the Mercury 13, American women selected by NASA in the late 1950s to train for spaceflight. Though they matched and sometimes surpassed their male counterparts in performance, they were ultimately denied the opportunity to head out to the launching pad. Their story, and the stories of pilots, physicists, and doctors who followed them, demonstrate the vital role women have played in the quest for scientific understanding. Karen Bush Gibson is the author of Women Aviators, Native American History for Kids, and three dozen other books for young readers. She lives in Norman, Oklahoma.

In Space Enterprise - Living and Working Offworld, Dr Philip Harris provides the vision and rationale as to why humanity is leaving its cradle, Earth, to use space resources, as well as pursuing lunar industrialization and establishing offworld settlements. As a management/space psychologist, Dr. Harris presents a behavioral science perspective on space exploration and enterprise. In this his 45th book, Phil has completely revised and updated the two previous editions of this classic, placing new emphasis on the need for more synergy and participation by the private sector. He not only provides a critical review of what is happening in the global space community, but offers specific strategies for lunar economic development. The author analyzes the human factors in contemporary and future space developments, especially relative to the deployment of people aloft. This user-friendly volume offers numerous photographs, diagrams, exhibits, and case studies.

* This is the only book that provides the full story of the role of women in space exploration. * Previously unpublished photographs of various aspects of training and participation in spaceflights are included. * Personal interviews with female cosmonauts and astronauts. * Traces the history of female aviation milestones from the early part of the 20th Century to the current space programme.

Book Review

The book Lady Astronauts, Lady Engineers, and Naked Ladies is a gender history of the American space community and by extension a social history of American society in the twentieth century during the Cold War. In order to expand and differentiate the prevalent postwar narrative about gender relations and cultural structures in the United States, the book analyzes several different groups of women interacting in different social spaces within the space community. It therewith grants insight into the several layers of female participation and agency in the community and the gender and race based obstacles and hurdles the female (prospective) astronauts, scientists, engineers, artists, administrators, writers, hostesses, secretaries, and wives were faced with at NASA and in the space industry. In each chapter a different social space within the space community is analyzed. The spaces where the women lived and worked are researched from a media, individual, and institutional angle, ultimately revealing the differing gender philosophies communicated in the public sphere and the space community workplaces by government and space community officials. While women were publicly encouraged to participate in the American space effort to beat the Soviet Union in the race to the moon, women had to deal with gender based barriers which were integral to the structures of the space community; just as they were an intrinsic component of all societal structures in the United States in the 1960s. The female space workers, who were often perceived as disrupters of the prevalent social order in the space community and discriminated by some of their male colleagues and bosses on a personal basis, still managed to assert themselves. They molded pockets of agency in the space community workspaces without the facilitation of regulations on the part of NASA that might have provided them with easier access or more agency. Thus, the space community, a place of technological innovation, was not necessarily also a place of social innovation, but a community with a government agency at its center that mainly mirrored the current (changing) social order, conventions, and policies in the 1960s as well as in the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, the women presented in this book were instrumental in advancing and consolidating the social transformation that happened within the space community and the United States and therefore make intriguing subjects of research. Thus, this systematic analysis of the connection between gender, space, and the Cold War adds a new dimension to space history as well as expands the discourse in American history about gender relations and the opportunities of women in the twentieth century.