Before women started flying in space, NASA was a little worried they might die having their periods.
The Mercury astronauts lined up in front of their spacecraft.In honor of Sally Ride’s birthday and the historic Falcon 9 rocket launch this week, we’re reliving one of the age-old questions that kept female astronauts out of space for decades.When NASA was preparing for Sally Ride’s first spaceflight in 1983, there was some. Namely, engineers needed to figure out how many tampons she would need for a one-week mission. “Is 100 the right number?” they asked her. “No.
But it was probably fine, the report concluded, because “it seems doubtful that women will be in demand for space roles in the very near future.” Besides, for the moment in the mid-1960s, NASA wasn’t open to women. The requirements for astronauts stipulated that they be military test pilots, and this excluded women across the board. No amount of campaigning would change the agency’s ruling during the Space Race.
Knowing this, engineers and flight surgeons weren’t sure if something similar might happen to a menstruating woman in space. If blood in the body pools in the torso and head, could menstrual blood float upwards and pool in the abdomen? Retrograde menstrual flow was a real worry because the consequences could be significant. Worst case, this could cause a condition known as peritonitis, an inflammation of the membrane lining the abdominal wall and organ inside the abdomen.
There is, however, another option for female astronauts and that’s not having periods at all. Properly called medically induced amenorrhea, it’s possible to suppress menstruation by messing with the body’s natural hormones, which is what some birth control methods do. The combined oral contraceptive pill is taken daily. For 21 days the pills contain an active ingredient that suppresses ovulation and thins the uterine lining.
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