The first woman in space was Soviet. The first North American of African or latino descent was a Cuban who flew with the Soviets. You get the picture. I’m no tankie. As bad as authoritarian commies are and as much as those were PR stunts to shame the US on the world stage, the US preferred to exclude they own citizens based on misogyny and racism than shield themselves from international criticism.
Human spaceflight is all about the optics as there isn’t much practical benefit. The optics the US was sending in the 60s was of clean cut military white men being sent to the moon by Nazi scientists and the majority was just fine with that.
Not sure that China will beat the US to the moon. They are making a lot of steady progress in spaceflight and technology in general and without the politics and waste we have seen for decades hampering US spaceflight. But even with the gap China has to make up I don’t think it is unrealistic to expect the first woman on the moon will be Chinese now.
China […] without the politics and waste
Wrong. China’s politics and waste may look different, they’re still there in huge amounts. Institutionalized corruption and cultural corner cutting, whether for a capitalist goal, or a power control and egocentrism goal, are still corruption and corner cutting.
Clearly there is lots of corruption and waste in China but I am not sure how much it would be tolerated when national ambitions are at stake and spaceflight is fairly adjacent to national security. I could be wrong. The US clearly wasted a lot of opportunities and several decades.
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Keep track of the names of collaborators for the trials.
Women and BIPOC couldn’t possibly be as skilled as white men. No possible way they could pass the same tests and qualify to be astronauts.
/s
Imagine gatekeeping the moon
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The “space race” has always been a propaganda stunt.
There is a reason you don’t hear about every experimental result from the ISS, those are actual scientific achievements and not propaganda, while a guitar on the ISS or how to drink water, end up on the news.
Right? Imagine being the white man chosen to go to the moon based on skin color and gender, knowing that more qualified astronauts had been passed up and that you are effectively propaganda. That would not be a great moment.
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This is absurd. First, the preemptive firings and now this. Despicable.
People should check the history of Marcos Pontes, the Brazilian astronaut, before parroting the narrative that only the most qualified and deserving get the job. It ended up being a case of you can do it if you have the money (or your government decides to pay to escape further embarrassment).
well after all the white men… I guess it’s time for more white men. Some men here on earth might get their feelings hurt otherwise.
Especially the orange man. We should send him to orange planet. Red planet. It’s gradiences, just send him there.
if we cant match orange. Golden brown is better.
Venus just looks more homely for him.
Well…all in all, imo there should go people qualified to eo the job, not “black, " lgbt” “woman” “white” “hetero” “homo” etc…Just qualified people, no biasing to anyone, just let scientists do the s ience, not politics…
But they ARE qualified, that’s why they were chosen. And now they are being denied simply because of what they look like, that’s kind of the whole issue here.
Assuming they’re not qualified is a form of implicit racial bias
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Yeah that would be a lovely change over the history of rejecting people purely based on being black female etc.
There is a possibility to make an effort to correct a nations shamefully bigoted history. While still choosing qualifying people to do it.
Unless you some how assume they would not be qualified just because they are not white males. Much as 1960s nasa and the whole of the US did during the space race.
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