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This matter had been discussed in various threads, but I think, it may be more convenient to have a single topic.
For starter, here's an interview of Svetlana Savitskaya published by rbc.ru two days ago. She has a special viewpoint on why there are too few Russian Female Cosmonauts. To mention what was left out in the article, she was also the first person to weld outside a spacecraft.
The text follows:
----------------
Svetlana Savitskaya: Russian men claimed space for themselves
The second woman to go to space and the first woman to perform a spacewalk, double Hero of Soviet Union Svetlana Savitskaya granter her exclusive interview for RBC.
On the brink of the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, the "Iron Lady" of Russian space told RBC about inequality in space, reaching targets, and outlooks of expeditions to Mars.
A woman aboard
"Our blokes don't like it when a woman takes a good and interesting work from them. Our society has not yet grew up to understanding that assigning a person to some work should only follow traits of professionalism, and not sex. We have no equality. Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov said [after Tereshkova's flight] that women don't have to do anything with space. But Academician Valentin Petrovich Glushko whose engines empowered Gagarin and others to fly, and who contributed for spaceflight no less that Korolyov, had a different opinion. He always told: I am sure that women may and should fly to space. They can work there no worse and even better than men. It's difficult to say why he was so sure of that" - tells emotionally Savitskaya. It's notable that only this topic in our conversation managed to somewhat excite otherwise cosmically unimpassionated "Space Lady".
"You should mind that the Americans didn't want to allow their women to go to space too. And even after Sally Ride flew and the first group of six ladies was gathered, they trained them, but haven't been assigning to preparing crews. But later in the mid 80's, they have undergone a society's mental shift. They begun looking at ability of a person to do a work well, valuing the result one can achieve, and not his or her gender. And since the 90's, this principle became the driver for position assignments, and in spaceflight too. In our country men love to say that women must not be put to risk. And when some job is interesting, the argument of saving women surfaces first. But then, aren't men human too, and don't need caring about? In America, the motivation is very different today", continued the cosmonaut.
S. Savitskaya believes, that in times of Perestroika, press was full of thrown in ideas that woman must be a housewife, that such occupation is a liking of most, that children are best brought up in close circle of family, while kindergartens do only harm. "The Americans watched at us with frightened eyes: What are you doing? We took your social equality and benefits as example for ourselves. And now you a driving back, why?" - remembered the representative of the State Duma, making a side note that during the USSR, there were formally mandatory equal wages for men and women, and the Superior Soviet and every branch of executive power could not have less than 30% women in staff.
In 90's, it resulted in selling away kindergarten buildings, which were occupied by various little firms. Now it turns out we are short of kindergartens, and the officials began taking them back, sometimes neglecting rights of property. "This is our social stupidity! Today there is a handful of intelligent bosses who would understand motivation of women and believed that only professional values should drive assignment decisions". got disturbed Svetlana Savitskaya.
"By the way, we now have leadership problems in space industry. There are no people similar in abilities to S. Korolyov, M. Keldysh, V. Glushko, V. Mishin today. Those we have aren't of such universal world outlook, and of much lesser authority", she summed up.
Target in place of Dream
Many generations of Soviet kids dreamed of growing up and becoming like Gagarin. However, Svetlana Savitskaya who fulfilled a dream of millions, prefers to describe that in different words: "I do not like the word Dream, it sounds like something cloud-built, like an unreachable thing. I like speaking of someone's life expectations, of a target that someone puts before himself. Spaceight is a job, and not an easy job, and I don't allow some striking feelings to drive myself around or put in the way of professional decisions I take. It require a person to have special psycho-physical qualities, such as ability not to be disturbed by vivid impressions in his job, and least of all, to allow such impressions make obstacles for his work. This is a technician's work, not too simple, and connected to risk. It rakes sober thinking, clear mind, accuracy, but not being driven in your actions by illusions and daydreams", cuts out Savitskaya.
Today the air of romanticism that used to surround spaceflight goes away, and the people who are coming into the job, come with real understanding of it. The values got re-valued, and nobody puts cosmic aims to himself, believes Savitskaya. Now the newcomers to spaceflight are more sober-minded, more open eyed, they prepare themselves for their duties ever since studying in the school. Often, they have heritage of involvement into the industry. There is no mass space fascination today. "That is not too good, of course, but, on the other hand, everyone can't be a Cosmonaut. This way, we have less shattered dreams", she notes.
In addition, new problems emerged these days, and many impede selection of new Cosmonaut candidates: "Even those who come to apply, have serious medical problems. We have much less healthy people. And that is despite that medical requirements are less strict than 20 years before, and are just incomparable with those we had 30 or 50 years ago. However, they are still strict enough. If we speak of ratios, in the past, to select one Cosmonaut, one thousand of people were to pass through selection. Now, we have to select one from two thousands. This problem aggravated since mid-90's. After the Soviet Union's breaking up, stressful atmosphere settled in families because of parents losing their jobs. That, together with poorer nutrition and worsened environmental situation, somewhat impacted mental and physical health of kids. Even those who passed the selection have worse "margin of endurance" than their predecessors, because their health don't match old standards", believes the double Hero of Soviet Union. "That's why situations when someone has got brilliant education and brains, but the medics don't let him go to space".
The tandem of leaders and China joining by
We asked her about how well Russia managed to hold positions of leadership in the manned space, half anticipating to hear a disaster story about lost positions. However, it turned out, not everything went too bad thus far.
"We've been leaders in space from the first day. And we have been first many times. Later, when the Americans landed on the Moon, they've became leaders no less than ourselves. Today the International Space Station runs mostly on our units and systems, which presence we owe to the work done in Soviet time. The Americans couldn't make a station of their own: in 1992 they were going to launch the Freedom station, spent several billion dollars to assure on the ground that their life support system works, but something went wrong with it. And just then, we collapsed and presented them everything on the dish, asking for no payback. That included our research on long duration flight in zero-G. They are now stopping flying the Shuttle. If we like so, we can now tell we are the only leaders again, because only Russian ships can deliver crews to the ISS", ironically notes Savitskaya.
"There are also the Chinese. Them are us 40 years ago. But they are going fast: they've already scored a first flight, a first spacewalk. At present, the leadership of two in manned spaceflight remains, however. But we are only holding to it thanks to the old Soviet heritage", sums up Savitskaya. At the same time, she can't see any promising projects or big reserves in Russia's space program. The worst thing this astonishingly dedicated woman is upset about is absense of a specific target put for the Russian space industry at present.
The predictable future
Forecasts for the future of space exploration by Svetlana Savitskaya are well founded and hold not a grain of fantasy: "During the USSR, we expected that by 2000, or by the late 90's, we would have spaceships propelled by nuclear drives. But at that time, the state had a clear view of space technology development, we had great technology leaders, money, tasks set. In the real 90s, however, the mood expressed like "Why do we need all that space, it's a waste of money better spent for social improvement, give us more sausage!" prevailed. Today, everything has turned again. After the oil spree it seems like the money flow to space industry improved", says the legendary Cosmonaut.
"By scientific and civilizatory value our next step in manned space exploration should be interplanetary trips. And the best first target is Mars. It is closer than other destinations, and bearable in terms of round-trip flight time. Now missions of automatic probes are planned to Mars, but it's not appropriate to say they are precursors of a piloted expedition. Such task just was not set yet. That's why I say that humans may land on Mars in 30 or 100 years, but surely not in 20, because to aim this time, we should have already begun a real work", she affirmed.
A mentioning of Mars-500 project was able to squeeze a wry smile out of the legendary Cosmonaut. She is sure that a project meant to lock people in a barrel for 500 days shouldn't be taken seriously. "We really didn't need it. Valery Polyakov has already flown in space for that many days, how many is required to get to Mars and back by the shortest route. Everybody is speaking of Mars-500, but that does not mean that humankind has set the goal for itself and is working at reaching it. If we want to be on Mars in 2025, we must already mind specific tasks and targets, and be working in cooperation with the Americans and the Europeans. But such tasks and targets are missing in our official Space Program", tells Svetlana Savitskaya, highlighting once again that lack of plans and aims puts an obstacle for the progress.
Svetlana Savitskaya is the second woman cosmonaut, the first spacewalking woman, who took part in two space missions with total duration of 19 days, 17 hours and 7 minutes. Also Savitskaya scores three world records in parachute jumping from stratosphere in group, and 15 world records in jet plane flying. Her labour record hold assignment her a specialty of test pilot. During working as one, she handled more than 20 types of aircraft. After she quit flying, she began a career of a tutor and a politician. Today she is a Deputy Chairman of the State Duma's Committee for Defense and a representative of Communist Party of Russia in the State Duma.
April 11, 2011.
Read the original article at:
http://top.rbc.ru/society/11/04/2011/574237.shtml
For starter, here's an interview of Svetlana Savitskaya published by rbc.ru two days ago. She has a special viewpoint on why there are too few Russian Female Cosmonauts. To mention what was left out in the article, she was also the first person to weld outside a spacecraft.
The text follows:
----------------
Svetlana Savitskaya: Russian men claimed space for themselves
The second woman to go to space and the first woman to perform a spacewalk, double Hero of Soviet Union Svetlana Savitskaya granter her exclusive interview for RBC.
On the brink of the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, the "Iron Lady" of Russian space told RBC about inequality in space, reaching targets, and outlooks of expeditions to Mars.
A woman aboard
"Our blokes don't like it when a woman takes a good and interesting work from them. Our society has not yet grew up to understanding that assigning a person to some work should only follow traits of professionalism, and not sex. We have no equality. Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov said [after Tereshkova's flight] that women don't have to do anything with space. But Academician Valentin Petrovich Glushko whose engines empowered Gagarin and others to fly, and who contributed for spaceflight no less that Korolyov, had a different opinion. He always told: I am sure that women may and should fly to space. They can work there no worse and even better than men. It's difficult to say why he was so sure of that" - tells emotionally Savitskaya. It's notable that only this topic in our conversation managed to somewhat excite otherwise cosmically unimpassionated "Space Lady".
"You should mind that the Americans didn't want to allow their women to go to space too. And even after Sally Ride flew and the first group of six ladies was gathered, they trained them, but haven't been assigning to preparing crews. But later in the mid 80's, they have undergone a society's mental shift. They begun looking at ability of a person to do a work well, valuing the result one can achieve, and not his or her gender. And since the 90's, this principle became the driver for position assignments, and in spaceflight too. In our country men love to say that women must not be put to risk. And when some job is interesting, the argument of saving women surfaces first. But then, aren't men human too, and don't need caring about? In America, the motivation is very different today", continued the cosmonaut.
S. Savitskaya believes, that in times of Perestroika, press was full of thrown in ideas that woman must be a housewife, that such occupation is a liking of most, that children are best brought up in close circle of family, while kindergartens do only harm. "The Americans watched at us with frightened eyes: What are you doing? We took your social equality and benefits as example for ourselves. And now you a driving back, why?" - remembered the representative of the State Duma, making a side note that during the USSR, there were formally mandatory equal wages for men and women, and the Superior Soviet and every branch of executive power could not have less than 30% women in staff.
In 90's, it resulted in selling away kindergarten buildings, which were occupied by various little firms. Now it turns out we are short of kindergartens, and the officials began taking them back, sometimes neglecting rights of property. "This is our social stupidity! Today there is a handful of intelligent bosses who would understand motivation of women and believed that only professional values should drive assignment decisions". got disturbed Svetlana Savitskaya.
"By the way, we now have leadership problems in space industry. There are no people similar in abilities to S. Korolyov, M. Keldysh, V. Glushko, V. Mishin today. Those we have aren't of such universal world outlook, and of much lesser authority", she summed up.
Target in place of Dream
Many generations of Soviet kids dreamed of growing up and becoming like Gagarin. However, Svetlana Savitskaya who fulfilled a dream of millions, prefers to describe that in different words: "I do not like the word Dream, it sounds like something cloud-built, like an unreachable thing. I like speaking of someone's life expectations, of a target that someone puts before himself. Spaceight is a job, and not an easy job, and I don't allow some striking feelings to drive myself around or put in the way of professional decisions I take. It require a person to have special psycho-physical qualities, such as ability not to be disturbed by vivid impressions in his job, and least of all, to allow such impressions make obstacles for his work. This is a technician's work, not too simple, and connected to risk. It rakes sober thinking, clear mind, accuracy, but not being driven in your actions by illusions and daydreams", cuts out Savitskaya.
Today the air of romanticism that used to surround spaceflight goes away, and the people who are coming into the job, come with real understanding of it. The values got re-valued, and nobody puts cosmic aims to himself, believes Savitskaya. Now the newcomers to spaceflight are more sober-minded, more open eyed, they prepare themselves for their duties ever since studying in the school. Often, they have heritage of involvement into the industry. There is no mass space fascination today. "That is not too good, of course, but, on the other hand, everyone can't be a Cosmonaut. This way, we have less shattered dreams", she notes.
In addition, new problems emerged these days, and many impede selection of new Cosmonaut candidates: "Even those who come to apply, have serious medical problems. We have much less healthy people. And that is despite that medical requirements are less strict than 20 years before, and are just incomparable with those we had 30 or 50 years ago. However, they are still strict enough. If we speak of ratios, in the past, to select one Cosmonaut, one thousand of people were to pass through selection. Now, we have to select one from two thousands. This problem aggravated since mid-90's. After the Soviet Union's breaking up, stressful atmosphere settled in families because of parents losing their jobs. That, together with poorer nutrition and worsened environmental situation, somewhat impacted mental and physical health of kids. Even those who passed the selection have worse "margin of endurance" than their predecessors, because their health don't match old standards", believes the double Hero of Soviet Union. "That's why situations when someone has got brilliant education and brains, but the medics don't let him go to space".
The tandem of leaders and China joining by
We asked her about how well Russia managed to hold positions of leadership in the manned space, half anticipating to hear a disaster story about lost positions. However, it turned out, not everything went too bad thus far.
"We've been leaders in space from the first day. And we have been first many times. Later, when the Americans landed on the Moon, they've became leaders no less than ourselves. Today the International Space Station runs mostly on our units and systems, which presence we owe to the work done in Soviet time. The Americans couldn't make a station of their own: in 1992 they were going to launch the Freedom station, spent several billion dollars to assure on the ground that their life support system works, but something went wrong with it. And just then, we collapsed and presented them everything on the dish, asking for no payback. That included our research on long duration flight in zero-G. They are now stopping flying the Shuttle. If we like so, we can now tell we are the only leaders again, because only Russian ships can deliver crews to the ISS", ironically notes Savitskaya.
"There are also the Chinese. Them are us 40 years ago. But they are going fast: they've already scored a first flight, a first spacewalk. At present, the leadership of two in manned spaceflight remains, however. But we are only holding to it thanks to the old Soviet heritage", sums up Savitskaya. At the same time, she can't see any promising projects or big reserves in Russia's space program. The worst thing this astonishingly dedicated woman is upset about is absense of a specific target put for the Russian space industry at present.
The predictable future
Forecasts for the future of space exploration by Svetlana Savitskaya are well founded and hold not a grain of fantasy: "During the USSR, we expected that by 2000, or by the late 90's, we would have spaceships propelled by nuclear drives. But at that time, the state had a clear view of space technology development, we had great technology leaders, money, tasks set. In the real 90s, however, the mood expressed like "Why do we need all that space, it's a waste of money better spent for social improvement, give us more sausage!" prevailed. Today, everything has turned again. After the oil spree it seems like the money flow to space industry improved", says the legendary Cosmonaut.
"By scientific and civilizatory value our next step in manned space exploration should be interplanetary trips. And the best first target is Mars. It is closer than other destinations, and bearable in terms of round-trip flight time. Now missions of automatic probes are planned to Mars, but it's not appropriate to say they are precursors of a piloted expedition. Such task just was not set yet. That's why I say that humans may land on Mars in 30 or 100 years, but surely not in 20, because to aim this time, we should have already begun a real work", she affirmed.
A mentioning of Mars-500 project was able to squeeze a wry smile out of the legendary Cosmonaut. She is sure that a project meant to lock people in a barrel for 500 days shouldn't be taken seriously. "We really didn't need it. Valery Polyakov has already flown in space for that many days, how many is required to get to Mars and back by the shortest route. Everybody is speaking of Mars-500, but that does not mean that humankind has set the goal for itself and is working at reaching it. If we want to be on Mars in 2025, we must already mind specific tasks and targets, and be working in cooperation with the Americans and the Europeans. But such tasks and targets are missing in our official Space Program", tells Svetlana Savitskaya, highlighting once again that lack of plans and aims puts an obstacle for the progress.
Svetlana Savitskaya is the second woman cosmonaut, the first spacewalking woman, who took part in two space missions with total duration of 19 days, 17 hours and 7 minutes. Also Savitskaya scores three world records in parachute jumping from stratosphere in group, and 15 world records in jet plane flying. Her labour record hold assignment her a specialty of test pilot. During working as one, she handled more than 20 types of aircraft. After she quit flying, she began a career of a tutor and a politician. Today she is a Deputy Chairman of the State Duma's Committee for Defense and a representative of Communist Party of Russia in the State Duma.
April 11, 2011.
Read the original article at:
http://top.rbc.ru/society/11/04/2011/574237.shtml
