The fault lies in rubbing two sticks togeather, or rather two sexes. Those troglodites in the military who knew that putting men and women together sometimes leads to complications, may have been somewhat correct. Is their an absolute necessity of having woment in the astronaut training program, or Abu Ghrib for that matter, or is it to make someone feel good (read: liberal-think...using the term very loosely).
Serious tasks, if one can take defense of the nation as a serious task, should not be “complicated” to satisfy the needs of any any particular demographic group.
Excellent post!
Yes! There absolutely IS a reason to have women in the astronaut corps. For too long the astronaut corps has been dominated by military types and not enough civilians have been allowed to fly. (Note: NASA’s official policy is that civilians are not allowed on the shuttle, but what do you call teacher turned astronaut Barbara Morgan, or Canadian astronaut Dave Williams? Neither is in the military.) It is true that the requirements to fly the shuttle are mostly amassed by military pilots but there are many talented scientists from which to pull the mission specialists from.
If you read her bio, she is a Navy Pilot. That means that when she joined the corps, before Columbia, she was on track to be a shuttle pilot and then a commander. But she flew (like many other pilots before her) as a mission specialist in order to get her into space before Shuttle goes down for the count. NASA has too many pilots and not enough missions left for them to fly.