Word: spaceflight
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...reasoning behind the prerequisite, according to officials, is that spaceflight could potentially harm the women's fertility. "It's out of the consideration of being responsible for the female pilots," Xu Xianrong, director of the PLA's Clinical Aerospace Medicine Center in Beijing and a member of the selection panel, told the official government news agency Xinhua. "Though there is little evidence on how the space experience will affect the female constitution, we have to be extra cautious, because this is a first for China." Ensuring that the female astronauts have already reproduced, he said, will guarantee that their family...
...Though Nowak's epic meltdown (and her termination by NASA) almost certainly hinged on more than her working-mom status, the case does underscore the arbitrariness of China's new policy. So does a 2005 study on reproductive health and spaceflight in the International Journal of Impotence Research, which reports that about 80% of the American female astronauts who came to NASA were not mothers. The report, which considers both genders, finds no evidence that short-duration spaceflight - missions of up to nine days - "has an adverse effect on the ability of astronauts to conceive and bear healthy children...
...Most female astronauts in the U.S. and other countries don't have children not because of the adverse effects of spaceflight but because they have intentionally delayed getting pregnant. Female astronauts who want to have kids tend to put it off early in their careers because of unpredictable flight schedules and because much of their training is forbidden if they're expecting. "Most prefer to get at least one spaceflight in before pregnancy," says Jennings, and are approaching their early 40s by the time they begin trying for children, when the risk of genetic defects and miscarriage is much increased...
Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin, who built the NASA-centric programs that were canceled on Monday, is, perhaps unsurprisingly, no fan of the new approach. "With this policy," he says, "the U.S. human space-flight program is grounded indefinitely, because no date for the availability of commercial human spaceflight can be reliably predicted...
...Enchantment. With site tours and a museum planned, organizers hope to welcome 1 million visitors annually. An independent study has forecast up to 5,000 new jobs and a $1 billion boost to the region's economy as Virgin Galactic and other aerospace companies move from tourism into commercial spaceflight like low-cost satellite launches...