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[–] 53 points 4 months ago (24 children)

Wait what happened with nasa with the tampons?

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  • [–] 101 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    I get to repost my top Lemmy comment:

    NASA is a very safety conscious organization. So they want to overestimate everything and include way more than they need. So when she said a couple per day you can round that to 5 for safety, then considering it's a 6 day mission they want to include triple the amount of needed supplies which means 18 days worth. 18*5=90 which is pretty close to 100 so let's round up again. Plus tampons are a useful first aid tool, especially in zero gravity. You shove some into an open wound and it'll prevent blood from spilling all over the very sensitive equipment. Does a woman need 100 tampons for 6 days? Of course not, but she wasn't going to spend a week in the mountains, she was going to space, so the safety precautions were much more stringent

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Good comment overall, but tampons should not be used instead of gauze for open wounds. They don't have nearly enough packing capacity to actually stop the bleeding. They only soak up the blood while the wound stays open and dangerous

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  • [–] 58 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (14 children)

    NASA provided Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, an absurd 100 tampons for a 6-day mission.

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  • [–] 65 points 4 months ago (12 children)

    This story always drives me insane. I'm a woman with endometriosis. When I was younger and was being dismissed as "dramatic" and "attention seeking", I absolutely had times where I went through a tampon an hour for 6 days straight (even overnight, had to set an alarm every hour to go swap), so 100 tampons for 6 days isn't actually ridiculous.

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  • [–] 64 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    always drives me insane that people think that they should have packed less. imagine running out of something in space that is cheap, light, necessary for lots of reasons and in a situation where things can go wrong, yes it was a week trip, but, sometimes that week trip can get extended because things can go wrong.

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  • [–] 22 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Also like 100 tampons don't take up that much room, afaik they don't expire if stored properly either.

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago

    and in a situation where things can go wrong

    This is a really good point. Never thought of that. There's really no limit to how adaptable a tampon can be in an environment where a leak can be catastrophic.

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  • [+] -13 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    It’s ridiculous that they didn’t ask the woman, you’re obviously an edge case.

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  • [–] 35 points 4 months ago*

    The story comes from a stand-up comedian's set. It is not a true story or a real thing that happened. The real story that the comedian's joke is based on was NASA did ask Sally Ride if 100 tampons would be enough, but they did not actually send her with 100 tampons. So yes, they did ask the woman.

    The first sentence of the article:

    Forty-six years ago, NASA engineers asked Sally Ride if 100 tampons was the right amount to send with her for a six-day spaceflight.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago

    Sure, I'm an edge case, but I'm just saying that this isn't entirely ridiculous. Are most women going to need 100 tampons for 6 days? No. But it's not like it's some absolutely absurd amount that no women would ever need, it's actually realistic for a very small percentage of us, and it's always told like hur hur this is so dumb. It's really not. It's worth asking.

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