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Originally posted by motor59:

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Originally posted by PASig:

Didn't the Soviets actually send a woman into space and pretty early on?

Yes they did, back on June 16, 1963.
Valentina Tereshkova in Vostok 6.
Took place between the last Mercury mission and the first Gemini unmanned test flight.

Tereshkova was a parachutist. They put her in the capsule just to say they had the 'first woman in space.' The Soviets did not 'equalize' the genders; this was a publicity stunt.

She was basically a passenger. The Vostok capsules were mostly automatic, in that the cosmonauts did not truly 'fly' the spacecraft like NASA did. It is still an important milestone, as the US didn't have our first female astronaut until the 1980s.

Also, Tereshkova got a really bad case of space sickness. Perhaps, her only fault was in admitting it. Space sickness afflicts about 1/3 to 1/2 of everybody who flies in space. It is caused by the brain's inability to reconcile perspectives in a micro-gravity environment (there is no 'up' or 'down'). I actually knew a blind guy in the 1980s that applied with NASA to fly on a shuttle mission to test the effects of spaceflight on the blind. After we lost Challenger, they cancelled the program.

Many astronauts (and I presume, cosmonauts) simply refused to admit they got space sickness, as they did not want to disqualify themselves from the program. Any sign of weakness could cost an astronaut his place on a subsequent mission. It therefore took awhile to define the problem and realize that it affected a lot of people. Also, it wasn't until Apollo that the problem really became evident. In the tiny Mercury and Gemini capsules, there really wasn't much room to move around. Therefore, it took NASA a long time to define the problem.

started this a while back, and am now partway thru season 2,


enjoying it so far, woke or not,

I've watched the entire series and really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's somewhat woke but I still found it interesting and enjoyed watching.

I've enjoyed the series since the first season, but it is "woke" to some degree. Fortunately, the writers seem to have the female characters exhibit the same errors in judgment as their male counterparts and this lends a degree of credibility to the story lines. The science of the episodes appears to be quite realistic, the acting, directing, and special effects are all outstanding, and although the plot twists become more predictable as the series continues until the finale, I guess that's okay at this point.

Overall, I'd give the series an 8.5 out of ten and these days that's pretty watchable in my book.

I tapped out around Season 3 or 4 (just after they found the N Korean guy). It wasn't the 'wokeness' that turned me off, it was how quickly the "character makes a completely unhinged decision that no one would ever make IRL" got old.

And the apparent nepotism. How many father/wife/child astronaut combos have there been?

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Originally posted by AllenInAR:
It wasn't the 'wokeness' that turned me off, it was how quickly the "character makes a completely unhinged decision that no one would ever make IRL" got old.

The co-creator is the same guy who developed the Battlestar Galactica remake so stupid and brainless decisions are par for the course.

The Stardoe BSG? Not gonna lie, I loved that series. But now that you mention it, there was a rash decisions, insubordination, etc. there too.

BUT....given they were on the verge of extinction, I could understand it.

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"For All Mankind"

At least they didn't call it " For All Person-kind".