Friend who’s training to be an engineer: This whole thing with the all-female space walk has been blown way out of proportion.
Me: How so? It seems pretty straightforward. They didn’t size up the space suits correctly and now they look like assholes.
Friend: Do you know who called off the spacewalk? Anne McClain. One of the female astronauts.
Me: …wait
Friend: You know, they don’t have one suit for each astronaut on there. Those things are heavy. A space suit is 310 pounds. Do you know how much it costs to send stuff per-pound to space?
Me: A lot?
Friend: Ten thousand dollars. Times 310 is 3.1 million dollars per astronaut and that doesn’t even count the cost of manufacturing the suit.
Me: So they leave the suits in the space station and switch out the astronauts.
Friend: Exactly, yes. Now, Anne McClain, like any astronaut, changed size after spending time in space. She decided a medium suit would be safer to use on a spacewalk, and it takes 12 hours of labor to make that adjustment to the spare suit they kept onboard.
Me: And they couldn’t do that because…
Friend: They have jobs! You don’t just get to go to space and hang out, you’re a full-time employee and you have shit to do.
Me: So… everyone reporting on this as a big feminist issue is…
Friend: An asshole, mostly. Safety is first. Spacewalk assignments change often. One of the women made the call. This wasn’t even supposed to be a big thing- someone in the media saw the schedule and said “oh! First all-female spacewalk! Let’s report on that!” so when it changed, it made a bunch of people angry without consulting the sources.
Me: So we’re mad
Friend: Because you want to be. And in so doing, you’ve ignored the woman’s opinion. Good job, buddy.
So, in the spirit of befact-checking, here are some sources on the subject:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/spacewalk-reassignments-what-s-the-deal
https://spacenews.com/spacesuit-issue-cancels-first-all-female-spacewalk/
And here’s the SNL Skit that looks pretty bad right about now: