WI: The Interkosmos astronauts have been women?

baltur2

Courtesy to the Soviet Union in the Cold War, Cosmonauts from various "brotherly countries" have got to visit Space and become early human pioneers in exploration of the Final Frontier.

For example in OTL, the first non-American, and non-Soviet person in space ended up being a Czech person, Vladimír Remek. He was successfully followed by the Polish Mirosław Hermaszewski (Poland did get into Space, yay!), followed by the East German Sigmund Jähn (yep the first German in Space ended up being an Ossi).

But what if these early pioneers of space ended up being women? For example instead of Vladimír Remek, a Czech woman was the first person from a third country outside of the USA and the USSR to get into space, followed by the successful flight of a Polish, Hungarian, or East German woman?
 
Petike

Petike

I'm not sure this would make this big a difference. It would be largelly the same as the OTL programme, you'd just have different people giving interviews for years after the conclusion of their flight in Intercosmos. The Soviets might even be somewhat criticized in the western press of doing this only for the sake of virtue-signalling propaganda ("We're the real feminists, Americans and Western Europeans have not sent women yet !"), as the Soviets' last female flight was back in the 1960s with Tereshkova. Since then, flights were all-male and they started resuming flights with female cosmonauts only in the late 70s and early 80s, Savitskaya being one example, also the first female spacewalker. Pozharskaya is another example, but she never flew, despite training. And these are non-foreign female cosmonauts, so it's still tight and low in numbers. (On a sidenote, post-Soviet Russia has also had very few female cosmonauts, Yelena Serova a few years ago being a very rare exception.)

As much as I would love to have a lady with Czech and Slovak ancestry fly on the first Intercosmos mission, followed by others, it's not that huge a change to OTL. The Soviets would get some bragging rights, but that's it. Also, though for all their flaws, I wouldn't accuse the Soviets of being non-feminist, it is true that they preferred to send men rather than women, until that started changing a little in the 1980s. I have a hard time seeing the Soviets being inclined to send so many female cosmonauts, and foreigners from allied countries at that, before there is more large-scale enrollment of domestic female cosmonauts into their own programme. It took NASA and ESA a while to make female astronauts a more common sight in their agencies, and even today, there's a fairly low number of currently long-term active female astronauts.
 
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Lalli

I don't believe that this would change anything. How much even first female cosmonaut or astronaut were noticed or changed things?
 
Kitiem3000

Kitiem3000

Donor
On the risk of sounding corny, it might serve as a great source of inspiration for women in general. I never really got how important representation was, but it has been made clear to me that it has an outsized impact on the groups that are being represented.
 

MrHaakwood

Kitiem3000 said:
On the risk of sounding corny, it might serve as a great source of inspiration for women in general. I never really got how important representation was, but it has been made clear to me that it has an outsized impact on the groups that are being represented.
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Thats an often repeated argument. But is this really so? Did American women cheered when Tereschkowa flew?
 
Kitiem3000

Kitiem3000

Donor
MrHaakwood said:
Thats an often repeated argument. But is this really so? Did American women cheered when Tereschkowa flew?
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I'm not sure if American media even mentioned it at the time, I was thinking more of European women. And a streak of women is bound to have more of an impact than a few high profile exceptions. And this would be during first wave feminism.

It isn't even that far-fetched, biologically and psychologically women are just more suited to space travel than men. [Why Women’s Bodies Are Better Suited for Space Travel]
 
Kitiem3000

Kitiem3000

Donor
MrHaakwood said:
This is a terrible piece of "journalism".
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What exactly is terrible about it? Every assertion is backed by a source, either NASA itself or the relevant scientific article. She is a science journalist who has written for National Geographic, Scientific American, NASA's Astrobiology magazine, etc, so we can assume a certain degree of expertise. Or do you not like the writing style? Most science writers tend to be a bit dry, it's because they stuff their articles with fact and figures. Can't be helped.
 
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