Word: space
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...didn’t really know what to expect,” Dougherty says. “What struck me is the dryness of the land—any sort of open space is just dirt...
...chosen to lead China into outer space are often referred to locally as "superhuman beings" - and not just because they train to cross the final frontier. Would-be taikonauts have to meet near impossible standards that are meant to weed out the less-than-flawless. Chinese astronauts cannot suffer from chronic sore throats or runny noses. They mustn't have food restrictions, strong regional accents, ringworm, cavities or scars. Bad breath, body odor and a snoring problem are all immediate disqualifiers. And if China's spacemen are expected to satisfy an unlikely string of qualifications...
...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 planning is not disrupted. But at least one authority, Zhang Jianqi, former deputy commander...
...eventually sentenced to a year's probation after pleading guilty to lesser charges of felony burglary and misdemeanor battery). Experts have since said that Nowak, who was married at the time and has three children, may have been driven to those extremes by the pressures of juggling her demanding space career and motherhood. "It's definitely a challenge to do the flying and take care of even one child and do all the other things you have to do," she told Ladies' Home Journal in an interview before her arrest. Psychologist Thomas Nagy, who has studied the stresses that dual...
...short-duration spaceflight - missions of up to nine days - "has an adverse effect on the ability of astronauts to conceive and bear healthy children to term." Though the study notes that the effects on the reproductive system of long-duration flights and the high-energy particle radiation found in space are not well known, some medical specialists hold that it's actually male astronauts whose reproductive capabilities are more vulnerable. "As far as the acute effects of radiation," says Dr. Richard Jennings, who practices gynecology and aerospace medicine in Texas and co-authored the study, "men are much more...