Science: Ladies on the Pad?

In the September issue of Ms, the Women’s Lib organ suggested that NASA is a male-chauvinist bastion that has barred qualified women from competing for berths as astronauts. Whatever the truth of that charge, the space agency is apparently moving closer to the day when women will be allowed to fly in space. NASA this week is completing tests on a dozen women at the Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., to determine how females respond to the physiological stresses of spaceflight.

Involved in the five-week program are twelve Air Force flight nurses (average age: 28). During the first two weeks, the subjects underwent testing on Ames’ big centrifuges—whirling machines that simulate the increased gravitational forces experienced by astronauts on liftoff and reentry. Eight of the nurses were then given 14 days of total bed rest to approximate the effects of weightlessness (the other four nurses served as an ambulatory control). After a second test on the centrifuges in the last week of the experiment, the twelve women will be examined by doctors. Among other things, they want to know how the women responded to zero-G, whether there was excessive pooling of blood in the legs during weightlessness, and if there was any significant metabolic, cardiovascular or glandular changes.

Until the test results have been studied, NASA is unwilling to draw any firm conclusions. But Dr. David Winter, the man in charge of the experiment, sounded quite optimistic: “I don’t see any differences [between the reactions of men and women to flight conditions]. Nor do I expect anything dramatically different.” If further study bears out that judgment, women may yet fly in space before the end of the decade.