SPACEFLIGHT:SHOULD THE FIRST CREW TO TRAVEL TO MARS BE ALL-FEMALE?

A new study carried out by the European Space Agency suggests that women may be better suited to space travel

- LIBBY JACKSON

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". Neil Armstrong's famous declaration tellingly illustrates that the first generation of Moon landings were a male-dominated affair. Perceptions back then were that women simply did not have the right stuff' to make it in space. This was, of course, nonsense.

These days progress has been made and now the world's astronaut corps are much more balanced in terms of gender. But could it be the case that females have the edge when it comes to putting humans back on the Moon, or travelling to Mars and beyond?

A recent study by the European Space Agency's (ESA's) medical team, concluded that "there may be a number of operational advantages to all-female crews [for long-duration missions]." The work considered a theoretical group of astronauts and made estimations of the life support requirements and consumables that such a crew would require. They concluded, not surprisingly, that because females, on average, are smaller and lighter than males, they would need less food and oxygen over the course of a mission.

This is key, as getting stuff - spacecraft, robots, humans and everything needed to sustain them into space takes large amounts of energy. The laws of physics demand that to orbit a planet, or to escape its gravity and fly to another one, the stuff needs to accelerate to very high speeds. The more stuff, or mass, you want to get into Earth orbit, or to the Moon or Mars, the larger the rocket you need.

So, if women are lighter, and eat less, should the first crew to fly to Mars be all-female? The ESA study was a follow-up to an earlier paper by the same researchers that considered a theoretical all-male crew.