"Advocating for Women-Only Space Missions Beyond Mars"

A recent study in Nature Scientific Reports suggests that sending exclusively all-female crews on long-duration missions could save resources, thus increasing the likelihood of success. However, the history of women in space has been marred by societal expectations, poor scientific practices, and cognitive biases that led to widespread discrimination. Despite passing the same tests as their male counterparts, women were excluded from the first US astronaut selection, with NASA's requirement for military test pilots precluding all potential female candidates. The article argues that the goal for any mission is to pick the right crew for the job, and if that means picking the astronauts who have the lowest body mass and resulting lowest energy, water, and oxygen requirements, and they also happen to be overwhelmingly female, then that is good mission design.