It seems we finally have proof that anything guys can do, girls can do better. One NASA guinea pig who spent four months in a simulation that attempted to replicate life on the Red Planet says women are better suited for a mission to Mars.
Karen Greene was one of six people who lived in a simulated Mars camp on Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano, as part of a NASA-funded research project called HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation).
Donning mock spacesuits and living with limited communication, food, water and power, Greene and the other "astronauts" experienced a real-life Mars on Earth.
Studying the eating and sleeping habits of the six participants, Greene found that the men ate more than the women, yet had a harder time maintaining their weight than the women did. Even though all crewmembers got the same amount of exercise, the men would burn about 3,000 calories a day while the women burned only about 2,000, Greene said. What's more, at mealtime, women would opt for smaller portions while hungry men would pile their plates and often go up for seconds.
"The calorie requirements of an astronaut matter significantly when planning a mission," Greene wrote in Slate. "The more food a person needs to maintain her weight on a long space journey, the more food should launch with her. The more food launched, the heavier the payload. The heavier the payload, the more fuel required to blast it into orbit and beyond. The more fuel required, the heavier the rocket becomes, which it in turn requires more fuel to launch."
So thanks to their size, women are, on average, cheaper to launch and fly than men.
Clearly every pound counts, but even so, NASA researcher Harry Jones, who has addressed these issues in a published paper, downplayed matters of body size and gender, saying astronaut selection should focus on other factors like crew performance.
"It's not really politically correct to mention that size, body type, gender, intelligence, agility, emotional structure, education, and other individual differences might all effect the cost-benefit equation in astronaut selection," Jones said.
In 1963, Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Two more decades would pass before the first American woman traveled to space, astronaut Sally Ride.
So how long before the first women hops aboard a mission to Mars? NASA did train women astronauts during the 1960s, according to Greene, but despite their excellent performance the idea was rejected for fear that the agency would receive public backlash if any women were killed during a mission.
Regardless of who is on board, male or female, there will be a manned mission to Mars by the 2030s, as it's deemed necessary for human survival. And if NASA does decide to take Greene's findings into serious consideration for a future flight to the Red Planet, it could mean one giant leap for women everywhere.