NASA once asked astronaut Sally Ride if 100 tampons would be enough for her week-long mission in space, but she later clarified that this number was excessive. While the engineers were concerned about potential needs, Ride humorously noted that a much smaller amount would suffice.
Tbh, this is not quite as dumb as it sounds. Tampons weigh nothing and if there’s no way to resupply, it’s not quite as dumb to take more than you need. What if, for example, there’s a series defect on these things and a large portion of them are defective?
In fact, when they asked her said it’s excessive, to which they told her they wanted to be on the safe side, so she said to cut it in half and bring 50pcs (which is still excessive for most periods, but on the safe side).
In fact, in the same mission they also brought jelly beans, which were entirely irrelevant to the mission, because Reagan insisted on his favourite snack to go to orbit. They were likely heavier than 100 tampons and also much less necessary up there.
I get the impression they were also preparing for a potential freak discovery where it turns out zero G has an extreme effect on the menstrual cycle, and they suddenly need a lot of them.
How long could the shuttle stay up there if it was deemed unsafe to return?
They might have been preparing to orbit for long enough to launch a rescue mission.
100 is probably still to many. I’m suprized they didn’t just buy a box of them, or ask the manufacturers, who surely have the most data on average tampon consumption.
Tbh, the story was reported by Ride on a talk show for laughs. It’s not exactly a well-documented incidence.
Likely, the package they ordered had 100pcs in them (because it’s meant for commercial clients) and they asked her something like “We got 100 here, how many do you need?”
It’s of course fun to insinuate that NASA engineers have never been close to women and thus have no idea how tampons work, but it’s more likely that this was just played up for laughs at a talk show.
On NASA defence is not the first time that due problems with vehicles an astronaut have to stay up there for much much much longer than their planed stance.
At the end I think the astronaut said that 50 would be enough. So the NASA estimate wasn’t really that far off. As it’s totally normal for a woman to use half or double the tampons than other woman during period.
Still a pretty dumb approach by the NASA guys. Didn’t it occur to them to ask a woman - any woman - before coming up with the initial estimate? Like “hey Sally, how many tampons do you normally need during your period? OK we’ll triple that for a safety margin.” There. Done.
They did ask her. Sure, they could have asked how many instead, but it probably came in a 100 count well within any significant mass margins, so they just asked if 100 would be enough.
Procurement for business/government/military (including and especially NASA), is very different than what you would see on a shelf at your local drug store.
The drug store can’t buy a single box of tampons. They have to get an entire case of boxes of tampons. If each box is say, 20 tampons, and there’s more than 5 of those per case, then they’re buying at least 100 tampons so they can get a single box of them.
There’s a lot of alternatives they could have looked into, like neighboring government institutions which may already stock them, asking them to supply a smaller quantity than they would have needed to order, or ordering outside of their typical channels and sending the intern down the road to buy a box from the nearest pharmacy… Those things wouldn’t really get accounted for in their budgeting though… So they would prefer to order through their normal distribution.
It’s a funny comment to make to Ride, “is 100 enough?” And I’m sure everyone had a good chuckle.
Regardless they probably didn’t see another good option for ordering other than to just buy a case of them and figure out the rest later.
Don’t agencies have some kind of de minimis threshold for just running out to the store and buying basic stuff? I thought that’s why the DOGE freeze of government credit cards a few months ago was causing labs to cancel experiments and employees paying out of pocket to feed horses and working dogs.
So the military does have a strict procurement process for rocket fuel, but they generally refuel their civilian vehicles (vans and such) with a government credit card at normal gas stations.
I suspect the strictness isn’t with the procurement process where a contracting officer defines very specific criteria in compliance with acquisition regulations and submits the process to competitive bids. The strictness is in the mission parameters where NASA’s ownership of the thing has already been established, but the NASA employees in a strict hierarchical decisionmaking process need to justify why a thing that NASA already owns should be included in the packing list on a mission.
In the end, same result. I guess it would be much harder to get a pack of stuff from Walmart onto a mission than something from a certified supplier who has a datasheet and certifications for the item. And having to order 100pcs of a very cheap product even though less would have sufficed isn’t a good reason to instead have to certify tampons of unknown origin manually.
Just launching the space shuttle costed $24mio per flight (in 1977 money), so saving a dollar or two by buying fewer tampons was clearly not a priority.
It depends. What area is the vehicle operating in, what resources are available in the area, both from internal department, intra department, and external/public…
There’s a lot of factors to consider.
I won’t pretend to know what factors got them to that point, but bluntly, it doesn’t really matter. Some set of circumstances created the conditions where such a question needed to be asked.
They definitely come in 100 counts. This part isn’t speculation. I have no Idea what NASA procurement looks like though, and I don’t have anyone to ask.
Tbh, this is not quite as dumb as it sounds. Tampons weigh nothing and if there’s no way to resupply, it’s not quite as dumb to take more than you need. What if, for example, there’s a series defect on these things and a large portion of them are defective?
In fact, when they asked her said it’s excessive, to which they told her they wanted to be on the safe side, so she said to cut it in half and bring 50pcs (which is still excessive for most periods, but on the safe side).
In fact, in the same mission they also brought jelly beans, which were entirely irrelevant to the mission, because Reagan insisted on his favourite snack to go to orbit. They were likely heavier than 100 tampons and also much less necessary up there.
When you’re dealing with the tyranny of rocketry, every gram matters.
That said, I agree with your point. The mass and volume was well within acceptable mission parameters.
I get the impression they were also preparing for a potential freak discovery where it turns out zero G has an extreme effect on the menstrual cycle, and they suddenly need a lot of them.
If you have a sample size of 0 and a backup plan of “crash and burn”, it does make sense to be extra careful with the preparation.
I prefer my backup plans to include “halt and catch fire”
“halt” might be difficult in orbit.
This implies that catching fire is easy while in orbit with minimal, if any, atmosphere.
Interesting take.
It’s not that hard. You just have to lose a little bit of speed, enough for re-entry, and there’s your fire.
How long could the shuttle stay up there if it was deemed unsafe to return?
They might have been preparing to orbit for long enough to launch a rescue mission.
100 is probably still to many. I’m suprized they didn’t just buy a box of them, or ask the manufacturers, who surely have the most data on average tampon consumption.
Why ask the manufacturer about the average consumption when you can ask the person in question about the real consumption?
Tbh, the story was reported by Ride on a talk show for laughs. It’s not exactly a well-documented incidence.
Likely, the package they ordered had 100pcs in them (because it’s meant for commercial clients) and they asked her something like “We got 100 here, how many do you need?”
It’s of course fun to insinuate that NASA engineers have never been close to women and thus have no idea how tampons work, but it’s more likely that this was just played up for laughs at a talk show.
No
Reagan probably got Nancy to shove them up his ass while performing her famous BJs.
Presidential Manpon
On NASA defence is not the first time that due problems with vehicles an astronaut have to stay up there for much much much longer than their planed stance.
At the end I think the astronaut said that 50 would be enough. So the NASA estimate wasn’t really that far off. As it’s totally normal for a woman to use half or double the tampons than other woman during period.
But it is a funny story indeed.
Still a pretty dumb approach by the NASA guys. Didn’t it occur to them to ask a woman - any woman - before coming up with the initial estimate? Like “hey Sally, how many tampons do you normally need during your period? OK we’ll triple that for a safety margin.” There. Done.
They did ask her. Sure, they could have asked how many instead, but it probably came in a 100 count well within any significant mass margins, so they just asked if 100 would be enough.
A 100-count box seems like an absurdly large unit size. Are you doing the very thing that the anecdote is intended to highlight?
Procurement for business/government/military (including and especially NASA), is very different than what you would see on a shelf at your local drug store.
The drug store can’t buy a single box of tampons. They have to get an entire case of boxes of tampons. If each box is say, 20 tampons, and there’s more than 5 of those per case, then they’re buying at least 100 tampons so they can get a single box of them.
There’s a lot of alternatives they could have looked into, like neighboring government institutions which may already stock them, asking them to supply a smaller quantity than they would have needed to order, or ordering outside of their typical channels and sending the intern down the road to buy a box from the nearest pharmacy… Those things wouldn’t really get accounted for in their budgeting though… So they would prefer to order through their normal distribution.
It’s a funny comment to make to Ride, “is 100 enough?” And I’m sure everyone had a good chuckle.
Regardless they probably didn’t see another good option for ordering other than to just buy a case of them and figure out the rest later.
Don’t agencies have some kind of de minimis threshold for just running out to the store and buying basic stuff? I thought that’s why the DOGE freeze of government credit cards a few months ago was causing labs to cancel experiments and employees paying out of pocket to feed horses and working dogs.
So the military does have a strict procurement process for rocket fuel, but they generally refuel their civilian vehicles (vans and such) with a government credit card at normal gas stations.
At least that’s how I understand it.
This is for stuff going on a literal space ship. I’m sure procurement was super strict on there.
Imagine getting some defective stuff (or even worse, stuff contaminated with bacteria or something like that).
I don’t think they’d just let some intern tun over to the local walmart and grab supplies from there for supplies for the space shuttle.
I suspect the strictness isn’t with the procurement process where a contracting officer defines very specific criteria in compliance with acquisition regulations and submits the process to competitive bids. The strictness is in the mission parameters where NASA’s ownership of the thing has already been established, but the NASA employees in a strict hierarchical decisionmaking process need to justify why a thing that NASA already owns should be included in the packing list on a mission.
In the end, same result. I guess it would be much harder to get a pack of stuff from Walmart onto a mission than something from a certified supplier who has a datasheet and certifications for the item. And having to order 100pcs of a very cheap product even though less would have sufficed isn’t a good reason to instead have to certify tampons of unknown origin manually.
Just launching the space shuttle costed $24mio per flight (in 1977 money), so saving a dollar or two by buying fewer tampons was clearly not a priority.
It depends. What area is the vehicle operating in, what resources are available in the area, both from internal department, intra department, and external/public…
There’s a lot of factors to consider.
I won’t pretend to know what factors got them to that point, but bluntly, it doesn’t really matter. Some set of circumstances created the conditions where such a question needed to be asked.
They definitely come in 100 counts. This part isn’t speculation. I have no Idea what NASA procurement looks like though, and I don’t have anyone to ask.
It’s either super complicated and expensive tampons with certification or some employee being send to the nearest supermarket
100/hour? That might be enough, but we really want wider safety margins, don’t you think?