this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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Wasn't the 100 tampons thing because they didn't know how weightlessness would affect bleeding?
That and NASA is a very safety conscious organization. So they want to overestimate everything and include way more than they need. So when she said a couple per day you can round that to 5 for safety, then considering it's a 6 day mission they want to include triple the amount of needed supplies which means 18 days worth. 18*5=90 which is pretty close to 100 so let's round up again. Plus tampons are a useful first aid tool, especially in zero gravity. You shove some into an open wound and it'll prevent blood from spilling all over the very sensitive equipment. Does a woman need 100 tampons for 6 days? Of course not, but she wasn't going to spend a week in the mountains, she was going to space, so the safety precautions were much more stringent
It's also a weight thing. Tampons are pretty light, it's like one hundred per pound, so they probably said "we can budget x pounds for this" and didn't think much about the reasoning behind why they're sending several hundred tampons into space, but we're entirely focused on how.
Less than that I think, and I’d suspect NASA would do load calculations in metric.
According to this reputable (first result on Google) High School Science Fair Project ^PDF, the average tampon is about 1g. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just budgeted 100g for it.
There's also the point that they don't go bad. It might be easier to send a load up now, that try and fit enough for each female astronaut into every flight.
Just a word of advice, the tampon in a wound thing, as much as the Russian military might advise it, is not good medical technique. Do not use a tampon to plug a wound. It'll likely do more harm than good. Just apply pressure to it from the outside with your hand if you have literally no other option.
Agree in general. The problem would be debris trapping, fluid compartmenting, sterility, etc.
But if you need a dressing and that's all you have, unpacking them into gauze pad like things would be great.
All of this assuming you are literally flying 7.5km/s towards a trauma center
Can the same be said about doing that in zero gravity with specialised sensitive equipment all around you that are essentially keeping you alive?
I'll take an infection over crashing down in the ISS any day.
Luckily I'm sure there's plenty of perfectly good alternatives for them. I don't think we need to even discuss that as am option. Some people will literally buy them for their IFAK in case of gunshot wounds on earth though, so I thought I'd clear it up.
Huh. Learned something today! Because I remember some "worst case scenario" show where a guy suggested just that if nothing else was available.
Imagine how much it would suck treating a wound with a tampon and dying of toxic shock. 😬
I learned recently that in space you might not need to piss as the piss floats in your bladder.
normally you get 3/4s full and really need a slash, but in space it can fill up totally without you feeling anything and then just bust out your urethra without notice.
honestly, it was probably a fair point.
Your bladder changes volume to hold urine; there's no floating, just pressure. Gravity affects that pressure though.
NASA also does everything they can to save weight though.
On later Apollo missions, they cut the number of band-aids in the lunar lander's first aid kit from 6 to 12 to save weight.
Doubled the bandaids to save weight. I can see why the tampon thing was a struggle for them.
They're to replace the tampons
I see here is the problem. The guy doesn't know how to reduce weight, you don't add more stuff to cut on weight. That explains the extra tampons.
I'm a government employee, so it makes sense that even my efficiency programs create bloat.
Not that I disagree that NASA isn't safety conscious, but I've recently watched a video about the challenge disaster which seemingly could easily have been avoided if they had listened to the weather concerns or redesigned their solid boosters after issues were observed in the first place. I guess in that case they just got too complacent.
That decision was made on a different level, though, and was largely political.
Every policy is written in blood.
menstrual blood, sometimes
I thought you were going to say adjust their tampon supply estimates and then something about mankind and hell in a cell...
My mom makes similar calculations for holiday dinners.
NASA is obsessed with redundancy, especially when the weight allowance lets them run away with it.
Add that to the fact that most of the engineers were men, and had literally no clue about how many tampons are needed for a normal woman on earth, and you end up with 100 being sent up for a two-week mission.
LMAO TWO-WEEK also they could just fucking asked
Apparently someone did, and then the response was that tampons are low enough weight that the packaging to send them was the majority of the weight, even when sending 100, so they sent 100.
They also developed a zero-g makeup kit because they thought that female astronauts would want that. It had eyeliner, lip gloss, foundation, and blush. All specially selected to not generate dust.
The makeup kit never actually flew, likely because someone asked an actual woman if she would ever want that shit in space.
Has no one ever thought to ask if the men might like it? :(
That sounds pretty cool regardless. Space pens are cool, even if mine will never write in zero gravity.
All you need to make that happen is a trampoline.
Considering the kind of person that gets to go to space, I doubt anyone wants it. 10 minutes of prettying up are 10 minutes taken away from research.
Might be worth it if you're aiming to be part of the first couple to bang in space. I'd certainly want to look my best for that.
I could see a woman, even an astronaut, carrying about what they looked like on the news when they land. I could also see them not caring. Mileage varies
NASA actually did a few press events where they did a live broadcast from either a module or the ISS.
Even if they don't wear it day to day, I can see an astronaut perhaps using some makeup for that.
Zero-G makeup kit sounds like a feasible thing to research, actually. But to utilise it, we haven't researched epic space station party technology yet. So, you know, priorities aren't great.
Maybe NASA thought what was happening on the ISS was a space opera.
They did ask. The source for the claim is Sally Ride talking about the time NASA asked if 100 sounds like the right number.
Smooth comment
They did. That's why they didn't send that many. It's not like it took them a long time to figure what the worst case number would be that fit in the budget.