{"id":402414,"date":"2025-09-06T10:32:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T10:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/402414\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T10:32:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T10:32:16","slug":"how-the-space-shuttle-helped-women-break-nasas-glass-ceiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/402414\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Space shuttle helped women break Nasa&#8217;s glass ceiling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">&#8220;The Nasa guys had realised that women might be women and therefore, while they were flying, it might be the time of the month when they got their periods,&#8221; Sullivan told me in an earlier interview.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">&#8220;They put some tampons in the PPK for Sally to look at and she pulled one out and it was like unreeling a string of sausages. Tampon, tampon, tampon, tampon, tampon. There were like 100. And they said, is that enough? Sally was hysterical and said, &#8216;No, no&#8217;. She thought that was really too much, thank you very much.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">As you may have gathered, Nasa had the engineering know how to get into space but not necessarily a full understanding of a woman&#8217;s priorities, or even their menstrual cycle. &#8220;The most obvious and amusing missteps were in crew equipment \u2013 clothing, parachutes, helmets, hygiene needs,&#8221; says Sullivan. &#8220;I think these were all innocent gaffes, and that the teams responsible for those did the best they could with what they knew.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-d1200759-0 dkIvM hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/p0m13glh.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Nasa Nasa had to make adjustments to equipment for female astronauts like Anna Fisher (Credit: Nasa)\" class=\"sc-d1200759-0 dvfjxj\"\/>NasaNasa had to make adjustments to equipment for female astronauts like Anna Fisher (Credit: Nasa)<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">While not everything hit the mark for the women, Nasa did get things right too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Nasa guys had realised that women might be women and therefore, while they were flying, it might&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-402414","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115156900106572644","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}