Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Women in Space

Episode Date: December 8, 2003

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This is Planetary Radio. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Matt Kaplan. What's the subject you least expected to hear about on our show about space exploration? What's that you said? Sex? Oh, I'm sorry. That just happens to be one of the many topics covered by this week's guest in her great new book. Stay with us for a conversation with Betty Ann Kevles about Almost Heaven, the story of women in space.

Bruce Betts will be here later, and he's bringing the pizza moon. First, though, here's Emily. She's thinking longer than miles, but shorter than light years. I'll be right back. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, Who determined what the distance between the Earth and Sun is, and how did they do it? The distance between the Earth and the Sun is enormous.

It would take 12,000 Earths to bridge the distance between the Sun and the Earth. For this reason, it is convenient to use the Earth's distance from the Sun as a length unit for describing solar system distances. Scientists call this distance an astronomical unit. One astronomical unit, the distance between the Earth and Sun, is about 150 million kilometers, or about 93 million miles. The first known determination of the length of the astronomical unit was carried out by the ancient Greek astronomer Aristarchus around 275 BC. He estimated the angle between the moon and the sun at the moment when the moon was exactly half full. In this way, the moon, earth, and sun formed a giant right triangle with the earth at the right angle.

Aristarchus's estimate of the angle, 87 degrees, was not very accurate, causing him to estimate the sun to be only 20 times farther from the earth than the moon, so he was a factor of 20 off. This estimate was adopted by Ptolemy and 14 centuries later by Copernicus. How was this estimate improved upon? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. Tune to Planetary Radio to find out. Raised in Southern California, Yale University faculty member Betty Ann Holtzman Kevles was a science columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

She published Watching the Wild Apes in 1976. It was the first of three award-winning and popular books about primates. Ten years later, she wrote the much-praised Naked to the Bone, a history of medical imaging. Her latest work is Almost Heaven, the story of women in space. It is a fascinating combination of living history, analysis, and tribute to the women, mostly Russian and American, who have gone where very few men or women have gone before. Professor Kevles, welcome to Planetary Radio. It's a pleasure to be here.

Let's start with one of the more obvious questions. Why was it so many years between Valentina Tereshkova and Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. It's because women played a different role in Russian Soviet culture than they did in American culture in the early 1960s. In America in 1960, it was just unthinkable to send a woman into a dangerous situation, and it was also unthinkable to put a woman into a dangerous situation. And it was also unthinkable to put a woman, now if we pass through with the Mercury, into the Gemini and Apollo phases of the first program.

It was unthinkable to put a woman together with a man in a capsule that was so small that they'd have to be sitting together for several days, maybe never changing their clothes. It was just beyond the range of anything Americans could cope with in those days. And the Russians didn't have that problem. And yet, as your book points out, even the Russians, there was very much a double standard going on here. There was the public face that needed to show Soviet womanhood could go into space, but the women themselves were not always treated with great respect.

And this was something that was found by some of the first American women to go over who were going to participate in the Mir space station program. That's true. And what's interesting is that while American culture changed enormously from 1960 to 1980 to 2003. The role of women in the United States and Western Europe is almost unrecognizable. The change in what people like me would call the strides, the improvements, are unbelievable in terms of how fast it happened. In the Soviet Union, it was different.

Women were needed. Lots and lots of men died during World War II. They needed women. There had also been, in the workforce, there had also been a tradition in Russia, as in most of continental Europe, of having women become scientists and mathematicians, which has never caught on as much in the English-speaking world. And I don't really understand all of the reasons why it didn't happen. It didn't happen.

Now, things have changed, of course, as you've said. And your book does... They didn't change in the Soviet Union. They really haven't changed very much. Well, I'm saying really they've changed in this country. In this country, they've changed remarkably. And your book traces really the evolution of that change through the women who were the players, the women who fought

for the opportunity to become astronauts, to go into space. You spend a good deal of time with a lot of these pioneers, and people can read their stories in your book, Almost Heaven, the Story of Women in Space. You know, I know because you told me before we started recording, that you hate to play favorites, but there were some people that you spent more time with and were very, very impressed by. I mean, I guess, really, were there any of the women astronauts that you weren't wonderfully impressed with? There were some who were less forthcoming than others. There were some who were less forthcoming than others. One or two said they did not want to be interviewed because they did not believe that women were different from men.

They said, I'm an astronaut, not a woman, not a man. I'm an astronaut, so I don't want to be interviewed. There's nothing to say. So that was a particular point of view for several women, and I accepted it and obviously did not interview them since I didn't want to be interviewed. I found that there was a slight difference between the first women, and although there were six women in the first group,

two years later there was another group with two women. They were eight women who were the initial women to integrate the astronaut corps, and they were all wonderful. I mean, Judy Resnick had died. I spoke to her father. They were all absolutely remarkable, wonderful people with very distinct personalities that you couldn't make a category about them

except that they were so independent and ambitious and determined. They wanted to be leaders. They wanted to be leaders. They wanted to be leaders. They wanted to be pace setters. They wanted to do something that no one had ever done before. They did not need role models, but they all became role models. And when they were role models, they took that job very responsibly because they knew that younger women would look to them.

Did they, as independent as they were, did they still form a community unto themselves? No, they didn't. And part of it was because NASA wisely did not want them to do that. So when they were given offices at the Space Center, they shared their offices with men. They were not all grouped together. And they were women who, as one of them said to me, well, you know, we were always the only woman in the class or one of a few, and we were used to having male friends.

So they continued to have male friends as well as women friends, but they were not really close to each other because they were just not used to that. Later on, the women who followed in the next 20 years were women who had gone to school with other women in graduate school and undergraduate school and were used to having friendships with other women. So you have actually a different kind of personality coming along.

I was about to ask you, how would you characterize these women who came later? How were they different from those first pioneers, that first group? Well, many of them said that they decided to become astronauts when Sally Ride came and talked to their class in graduate school. Speaking of role models. So there she was, and Sally Ride has done a remarkable job, both recruiting other women to become astronauts, and now she has something called the Sally Ride has done a remarkable job both recruiting other women to become astronauts, and now she has something called the Sally Ride Clubs,

which is aimed at young girls to try to get to the club that you kind of get to on the Internet. It's to encourage little girls to study mathematics and engineering and science and become something that they might not have become without this encouragement. You write extensively about the experience that Shannon Lucid had. In fact, you spent a good deal of time talking with her. She was, of course, the first American woman to be on a space station and was there with Russian cosmonauts. So here were the two worlds coming together, and her experience was fascinating.

It's also interesting that when I was in Russia, where I went to interview the Russians, every time I mentioned Sally Ride, people burst out into smiles, and they said, in whatever language they could do it, whether it was English or whether someone was translating, they loved Shannon. Shannon seems to have the kind of personality

that makes people want to be with her, and they don't get tired of her company. And she's done remarkably well in space, even stayed in terrific shape, better shape than, I take it, many male astronauts and cosmonauts have come back from long stays in orbit. Yes, she used

the treadmill every day for hours, although she hated it, but she did it. That is the only explanation that anybody has for why she was able to walk off the shuttle, which brought her back after months on Mir. But it may be something else.

We really don't know, but she certainly did come back physically healthy. She also was able to keep herself healthy mentally. She took time to rest. She read lots of books. She did all the experiments she had to do. She was kind of an integral part of this little family with the two Russians, and they all learned to make jokes together, to have meals together. She just did everything right.

I think we'll take a break now, but I did want to get into talking about Shannon Lucid and the terrific both mental and physical shape that she stayed in because one of the major topics in your book, late in the book, is the lack of medical and psychological research on women in space. In fact, to a large degree, on men in space and the difference between them. There's so many topics we could talk about in your book, but in our limited time, if it's all right, I think we'll come back and talk a little bit about that. That's fine. We're talking with Betty Ann Kevless,

Professor Betty Ann Kevless of Yale University. She has written Almost Heaven, the Story of Women in Space, which is out now, has been published by Basic Books. Planetary Radio will continue in just a moment. Join Pasadena's other big New Year's party. Wild About Mars comes to the Pasadena Convention Center on Saturday and Sunday, January 3 and 4. Join Buzz Aldrin, Ray Bradbury, and Bill Nye the Science Guy as the first Mars exploration rover arrives at the red planet.

Order your discounted tickets by calling 1-877-PLANETS today. That's 1-877-PLANETS or online at planetary.org. Matt Kaplan back with Planetary Radio and our special guest this week, Betty Ann Kevless of Yale University, former science writer for the LA Times, has written many excellent science books, the latest of which is Almost Heaven, the story of women in space, for which she did extensive research and has spoken to many of those women who have slipped the surly bonds of Earth. Betty Ann, I said that if we could, we could come back and talk about this glaring hole,

at least that's what it appears to be, as you documented, glaring hole, at least that's what it appears to be, as you documented, in the research that has been done by NASA, the nearly total lack of research on the physiologies of men and women, how they differ, and the advantages and disadvantages that each might have as spacefarers. Well, there has been a lot of studies, of medical studies of the astronauts on the kinds of studies that are not particularly sexual. We know about heart rate. We know a little bit about what happens to the brain.

We know about kidney function. All these things are very important. So NASA has not been neglecting following the health of astronauts, but they have been apparently, for whatever reason, avoiding any effort to look at hormone differences, to look at psychological or emotional differences, especially in terms of people staying a long time. Now that we're thinking about going to Mars,

we need to know if men and women are the same when it comes to being locked up in a relatively small space for a year at a time. NASA has not really investigated this, and they have avoided investigating this. At one point a couple of years ago, when Dan Golden was the administrator, he suggested an all-female crew. And all the women astronauts said, absolutely not. But there was a woman then who was the head of NASA's chief scientist named Kathy Olson, and she thought it was a very good idea, but she was ignored. And it seems to come down to several things.

The women don't want to be separated as women. They think that it would be that someone would find something about them that would make them inferior, which has been, of course, what has happened to women over and over again in the past. So this is not a crazy feeling. But it hardly seems more likely than finding factors which would show that they are superior to men. Absolutely. They just don't want to know. And they have also taken advantage or gone along with a general tendency of all the astronauts who have, according to present laws, the right not to have their medical information made public.

And most of them have refused not all of them but so we don't even know little things that would be kind of interesting to know it might have some medical significance we have we know very little about how women in general respond in terms of their menstrual cycles because they have not wanted this to be reported mm We don't know if there are, in fact, differences between the way a man's heart and a woman's heart responds to weightlessness. So even these apparently neutral physiological phenomena might be different between men and women, but they have not looked at it that way.

This strikes me as a possibly dangerous lack of data in view of the fact that someday a crew is going to go to Mars. There will surely be both men and women on that crew. They're going to spend two years in fairly hard radiation, in zero-g and low-g, and in very tight quarters. And it would seem that we ought to know how things are going to work out, not just physiologically and psychologically but shall we say sociologically uh all the speculation of the

the tensions and other things that could happen uh and frequently do happen when men and women are put together in uh in a tight space for a long time but you know what it's also true that it happens with men and men i I mean, the whole question of sexuality has been unexplored as far as we know by NASA's medical people. They have always assumed that everybody

who is going off is heterosexual and there's no real reason to believe that. We certainly know it wouldn't even be legal to not tag people because of their sexual orientation. Don't ask, don't tell in orbit. Right. But the assumption always has been that nothing could happen between men,

and this is mind-boggling when we consider the way we know that men behave in prison when there are no women, that sexuality has its outlets whether or not we approve of them. Now you asked some of the women who've been in space about this and also pointedly asked, could they conceive of this having happened, sexual relations between same-sex, heterosexual relationships? And it seemed that most of them found this pretty humorous and said, we never would have had time, or the privacy. Well, that's probably true, although there are people who say,

oh, well, it could have happened, and they will give scenarios. But in fact, the way it works, it has worked on the shuttle, is that people's time was plotted out to every single moment. There wasn't much free time. There's also a majority of the time they're in the shuttle they're being videotaped by someone uh and then uh as my as janice boss uh pointed out that she's pointed to the hammocks being just eight inches apart nothing could really happen uh that was not known to everyone uh unless people could slip off into a laboratory. That exists in the cargo hold when they're having a science mission.

Who can tell? But if it has happened, no one's talking about it, and I really suspect that nothing did happen. There's also the possibility that nothing could happen. There's also the possibility that nothing could happen. No one really knows if the male body will respond physiologically in low gravity. No one knows what the testosterone level is. They haven't looked at any hormones.

So we really just don't know. Well, I suspect we're going to find out one way or another someday, whether it's a part of formal research or informally done. Well, I think one would not set people off on a trip to Mars without knowing some of this. It just isn't the way we all function. It would be dangerous. We are almost out of time, and there is so much more we could talk about in this book, which is absolutely packed with stories about the history of women in space, a story that is still just barely getting underway.

And I should say that the book is published recently enough that you were even able to address the tragic loss of Columbia. And Laurel Clark and Casey Chawla, did you meet both of them? No, I just met Casey. I was only interviewing women who had already flown, and Laurel Clark was a rookie on the Columbia flight. If you had to size up this latest crop of astronauts coming from around the world, do you reach any conclusions about the future of women in space? Well, I think that all the women I met were absolutely wonderful.

They were highly intelligent, but they were extraordinarily non-egocentric. They were people who were able to work well with other people. They were not people who were looking to be famous. They were people who loved their work. They were people who loved their work. They are people who love their work. And each one of them is really a very different, special person. They don't fall into any category. I think that right now women make up, oh, somewhere around 25%,

maybe less, of the astronaut corps. I don't think there is a quota. I don't think there has been. At first they wanted to make sure they didn't just take one woman. NASA was very careful not to have token women, so they started with six. I think we need more women studying mathematics and science and going into these fields, and then we will have more women astronauts. Professor Kevles, we're out of time, I'm afraid.

Well, it's been wonderful talking to you. It has been a great pleasure both talking to you and reading your book, which is Almost Heaven, the Story of Women in Space, by Betty Ann Kevles. It is out from Basic Books right now, and I assume it is available all over the place, including Amazon. And that means it's also available through the Planetary Society website. And I know you'll be visiting the Planetary Society this week for a book signing and some acknowledgment of this accomplishment. I'm looking forward to being in California again.

Yes, we should say that you mentioned in the beginning of the book that you almost literally grew up in the shadow of Caltech and the Planetary Society. That's right. Well, thank you for the plug, and we hope the book is very successful. Thank you very much. And I'll be back with Q&A. How is the astronomical unit, the distance between the Earth and Sun, determined? An accurate determination had to wait for the introduction of the telescope. In 1672, Jean-Dominique Cassini found a solar distance of roughly 10,000 Earth diameters,

an estimate only 10% off of the real value. Cassini made observations of Mars from Paris at the same time that his colleague, Jean Richer, observed from Cayenne in French Guiana, and used the difference in angles to determine the Earth's distance from the Sun. More accurate telescopes and clocks have allowed this estimate to be improved upon over time at the same time that we have determined the other planets' distances from the Sun. Mars is relatively close to the Sun, at 1.5 astronomical units away, but the next planet, Jupiter, is five astronomical units from the Sun,

or five times as far from the Sun as the Earth is. Cold Pluto averages a whopping 40 astronomical units. But there are still bigger distances in space. The nearest star, for example, is over 250,000 astronomical units from the Sun. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now, here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Time again for What's Up with Bruce Betts. Bruce, you putting up the Christmas decorations?

Oh, getting close. Yeah, we're working on it. Time not to hurt ourselves. Because a minute ago there was a hammer and nails going, and I heard the hammer even on the phone. Oh, that was my two-year-old. That's good. That's good. Get them started early. Yeah. Well, we move to power tools when they turn three. What have you got for us?

Well, we've got all those naked-eye planets being naked-eye, if you're really looking for them. In the dusk, just after sunset southwest, Venus really easy to see. It's incredibly bright. And if you look to the lower right of Venus, you might be able to pull out Mercury. Mars is up also at sunset. And in the south, looking reddish-orange-ish, much dimmer than Venus. And Jupiter you'll see rising in the east around midnight and really high in the south at dawn. And Saturn rises roughly at sunset and sets shortly before dawn.

Good stuff. And we want the audience to know that Bruce's mention of naked-eye planets has nothing to do with the fact that sex came up on today's Planetary Radio for the first time and possibly ever. That is true. You've actually rendered me speechless. So let's move on to this week in space history before I stop being speechless. December 14th, a couple big dates in exploration history. In 1962, the first flyby of another planet

by a spacecraft as the U.S. robotic spacecraft Mariner 2 flew past Venus. Ten years later, now 31 years ago, since a human was on the moon. 31 years ago, Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan

became the last astronaut to walk on the moon. Wow, that was this week. Indeed, indeed it was, this week in space history. Wouldn't you agree that's much too long? Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. And certainly all of the people like Gene Cernan never imagined it would be that long until we were back. So, yeah, much too long since we played really anywhere out of low Earth orbit. But that will get us off on a philosophical discussion.

Instead, I prefer to go on to random space facts. Do you play golf, Matt? I took lessons when I was 10 and was so bad that I joined a swim team. Okay. Well, this is one of those silly analogies that you can do with planetary exploration involving golf. The Voyager spacecraft delivered accuracy at Neptune, which is about 100 kilometers, divided by the trip distance, which was about 7,128,603,456 kilometers approximately. Give or take.

That was the equivalent of sinking a 3,630-kilometer golf shot. Our Voyager, as opposed to a golf shot, was allowed a few minor trajectory adjustments along the way. We have saved a lot of time for trivia here. We better roll right on to it. I'm just going to roll right on past that hole in one of our three class to uh... what what the people who are not known as the people we have more entries than usual this week and more of them that were worth mentioning uh... and i i i think that that it really does everybody loves pizza you know

these are not the winners folks is just people who had great answers to that whether it be there's a good No one's a loser on Planetary Radio. Alan Siprich, an old friend of Planetary Radio in Hudson, Pennsylvania, he said the name actually derives from the moon's saucy appearance and not, as some may speculate, Galileo's shameless attempt to further interest in Italian cooking. Okay, here's one from Barry Olson of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Keep that location in mind. The pizza moon is Io with lots of good Canadian back bacon, I hope, eh?

Jupiter's Io is the moon that is sometimes referred to as the pizza moon, but you can't have it delivered, nor would you want to. Sulfur and anchovies would not go down well. have it delivered nor would you want to sulfur and anchovies would not go down well that from bill magnuson of malden massachusetts and sean o'leary another regular he had it he gave us everything you wanted to know about io that you could fit into a single email and had the uh the palette uh the chemical basis or possibly the chemical basis of the palette. The green, he said, green silicate or sulfur and lava mixed, white sulfur dioxide frost, black rock or ferrous sulfide, and red sulfur gas. And then, oh, and yellow. I left out yellow, solid sulfur.

Yeah, okay. Close enough. But anyway, you probably want to know who the actual winner was after all that. I do, and I think everyone else out there does. Really? Please tell us. Brian Morgan. Brian Morgan of Park Falls, Wisconsin said Jupiter's moon Io is sometimes known as the pizza moon.

Congratulations, Brian. Congratulations. Obviously because of the appearance, especially in some of the images that have been souped up to make them look prettier. Looks a little like pizza. This week we're going to be a little more boring, but if people want to picture pizza while you're answering this question, what was the name of the Apollo 17 lunar module? Of course, the classic Apollo 11 lines involving the eagles landed.

The eagle was the lunar module there. Apollo 17, the last lunar module on the moon. What is its name? So how can people get those entries to us? Go to planetary.org. Follow the links to Planetary Radio. In fact, you can actually go to our new URL if you'd like, planetary.org slash radio. Oh.

Now, wait a minute. I didn't know about that. Yeah, well, the host is always the last to know. No, I thought maybe you were saving that as sort of a nice birthday surprise, except that it's not my birthday. I was going to say, happy birthday. It is, it is. We thought after a one-year anniversary, maybe it should have its own special,

easy-to-remember URL, planetary.org slash radio. There you go, folks. Well, we have our own private URL now, but you know what? Even if you just do planetary.org, you'll see the radio show there. Indeed. Look up at the night sky, everyone, and think of what you like on your pizza. Thank you, and good night. And I thought he was going to say, and think of anchovies.

Close enough. That was Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He is here each week with What's Up. As always, thanks for listening. Please tell us what you think of Planetary Radio. Write to planetaryradio, that's one word, at planetary.org. See you next week.