Sally Ride, the first American woman in space died recently
and that set me to thinking. If Sally
Ride was the first American woman in space, who was the first woman in
space?
From the back of my mind came the face of a Soviet cosmonaut
from the early 1960s. With a little
Googling around, I came up with the forgotten name to go with that face: Valentina Tereshkova, who flew for the
now-defunct U.S.S.R space program back on 16 June 1963, making her the first
woman in space. But due to Cold War
politics, she faded from America’s memory.
Ms Ride flew on the space shuttle Challenger,18 June 1983, 20 years
after Tereshkova flew in space.
Despite being the third woman in space, Sally Ride is The
Woman of Space to many Americans. The
real poke in the eye for astronaut women was the fact that Geraldine Cobb was
the first U.S. woman to undergo astronaut testing, but the program was scrapped
in 1961. Who knows, Ms Cobb might have
had the honor of being the first woman in space had things gone
differently. As an aside, Svetlanta Savitskaya was the first woman to walk in space on 17 June 1984, with a walk
that lasted over three hours.
So this mania of space firsts led me to wonder as to what
was the first animal in space from those primitive launches of V-2s, to
Sputnik, to recent history, and I have the answers here:
- First chimp in space was Ham who flew on a U.S. Project
Mercury rocket on 31 January 1961.
- First dog in space was Laika, who flew for the Soviet
Union on 3 November 1957.
- First monkey in space was Albert, a rhesus monkey who flew
on a captured V-2 rocket on 11 June 1948, launched by the USA.
- First insects in space – fruit flies launched in U.S. V-2
rocket 1947. Earlier 1946 flights did
not fly high enough to enter space, only ascending 38 miles. See below.#
- First plant in space – corn launched in the same U.S. V-2
rocket that carried the fruit flies in 1947.
- Despite the Muppet Show, there never were any Pigs In Space, sorry Ms. Piggy
I’ve got to wonder, who will the first child in space
be? This comes from an old Lost In Space Fan, both the comic book and the TV show. It’s kind of funny that monkeys, chimps, dogs, fruit flies, and
even corn beat human beings into space.
Think about that next time you have corn for dinner or bat at a pesky
fly!
Ham, the first chimp in space is buried at the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, just an early missile’s shot from where Robert Goddard,
inspired by H. G. Wells* and early science fiction, tested his primitive
rockets and where the U.S. tested and launched captured NAZI V-2 rockets on
White Sands in the late 1940s.
Sally Ride is gone and so is the chance to meet her, but
Valentinia Tereshkova is still alive and it would be really nice if some large
SF convention with a good budget could get her to attend as Astronaut Guest of
Honor. I’d really like to meet
her. I’m sorry I never got to meet
Sally Ride.
It’s a shame the space race during the Cold War was such a
politicized affair of us versus them although that drove the U.S. into
space. It’s also a shame that Sally
Ride is being made into a political statement after her death. She flew as a human being, a woman, and an
American, listed in no particular order.
She is survived her ex-husband, astronaut Steve Hawley (1982-1987) and
by Tam O’Shaughnessey, her partner of the past 27 years, and by millions of aspiring
astronauts that looked up to Sally Ride … as a person.
CoastConFan
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*H. G. Wells died 13 August 1946, I don’t know if he was aware of
the 1946 White Sands rocket tests or his impact on Goddard, but I’d like to
think he did.
#Note: The boundary of space is not always defined uniformly by different agencies at
different times. Such as the Karman Line
100km (62 miles) used by the Federation Aeronautic International, NASA mission
control using 122 km (76) miles as re-entry altitude, and the U.S.A uses the
definition of 50 miles (80km) as space
in determining who is an astronaut.
These boundaries become important when applying U.N. Space Law.
Links:
A list of women in space http://www.aerospaceguide.net/women_in_space/index.html
An article about animals in space http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_in_space
Timeline of Rockets http://inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/Rocket_Timeline_5.htm
An article about outer space in general http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_space
An article about weightlessness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weightlessness
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