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Lansing State Journal • Saturday, April 3, 2010 • 7A
SPACEWOMAN POWER
A record 4 female astronauts to orbit Earth at same time in 2 spacecraft MARCIA DUNN Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space is about to have a female population explosion. One woman already is circling Earth in a Russian capsule, bound for the International Space Station. Early Monday, NASA will attempt to launch three more women to the orbiting outpost — along with four men — aboard shuttle Discovery. It will be the most women in space at the same time. Men still will outnumber the women by more than 2-to-1 aboard the shuttle and station, but that won’t take away from the remarkable achievement, coming 27 years after America’s first female astronaut, Sally Ride, rocketed into space. A former schoolteacher is among the four female astronauts about to make history, as well as a chemist who once worked as an electrician, and two aerospace JOHN RAOUX/Associated Press engineers. Three are AmeriIn Florida: Three women that will fly aboard space shuttle Discovery can; one is Japanese.
13 days in space
But it makes no difference to educatorastronaut Dorothy MetcalfLindenburger’s 3-year-old daughter Cambria. “To her, flying is cool. Running around is being cool. Just learning and growing up as a kid is cool. There aren’t a lot of distinctions, and that’s how I want it to be,” said Metcalf-Lindenburger, 34, who used to teach high school science in Vancouver, Wash. Indeed, the head of NASA’s space operations was unaware of the imminent women-in-space record until a reporter brought it up last week. Three women
are (from left) Naoko Yamazaki, Stephanie Wilson and Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger arrive Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center. have flown together in space before, but only a few times. “Maybe that’s a credit to the system, right? That I don’t think of it as male or female,” space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier said. “I just think of it as a talented group of people going to do their job in space.” Discovery’s crew of seven will spend 13 days in space, hauling up big spare parts, experiments and other supplies to the nearly completed space station. It’s one of four shuttle flights remaining. Monday’s liftoff time is 6:21 a.m.
Metcalf-Lindenburger and Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki, both rookies, will become the 53rd and 54th women to fly in space — and the 516th and 517th spacefarers, overall. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the world’s first space traveler in 1961. The Soviet Union followed with the world’s first spacewoman in 1963: Valentina Tereshkova.
‘A great start’
“I’d love to have those numbers be higher,” said astronaut Stephanie Wilson, 43, who will be making her
MISHA JAPARIDZE/Associated Press
Russian mission: U.S. astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson waves before the launch of a Soyuz-FG rocket on Friday at the Russian leased Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
On the Web
w NASA: www.nasa.gov/
mission_pages/shuttle/ main/index.html
third shuttle flight. “But I think that we have made a great start and have paved the way with women now being able to perform the same duties as men in spaceflight.” Wilson became the second black woman in space in 2006; one other has since followed her. Yamazaki will become the second Japanese woman to fly in space. Dr. Chiaki Mukai was the first in 1994. Perhaps even more astounding, at least in Japan, Yamazaki’s husband quit his space station flight controller’s job to follow her career and help care for their 7-year-old daughter. “It is very rare. In Japan, it’s general for men to work and for women to stay at
Studios snub proposed betting on ticket sales Film group says idea amounts to legal gambling
corn farmers staying out of the futures market for corn. “The studios only represent a small part of the hedging community,” said Rich Jaycobs, president of the proposed Cantor Exchange.
RYAN NAKASHIMA
Real currency
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Think you’re better than Hollywood at gauging whether an upcoming flick will be a box office bomb or a sleeper hit? You’d get a chance to put your money behind that under two proposals that movie studios are denouncing as legalized gambling. The proposals the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission are expected to rule on this month would let movie fans, industry executives and speculators bet on expected box office receipts. Investors profit if their predictions come true and lose if they don’t. These online trading forums would be similar to futures markets common for commodities such as corn, pork bellies, natural gas and silver. Although goods are rarely exchanged directly through such markets, they let buyers and sellers reduce risks by locking in prices months ahead of time. A corn farmer might want to do that in case a bumper crop pushes prices too low.
Hollywood objects
Now, two companies want to bring that concept to Hollywood, a notoriously risky industry in which big-budget productions can go bust in a single weekend and independent movies can become unexpected hits. But the investors most likely to benefit from such an exchange — the six major Hollywood studios — have rallied against the proposals. Although the companies behindtheexchangesstillplan to proceed, regulators pushed back a decision on one of the proposals, Trend Exchange
Associated Press
Good bet: A proposed trading forum would let investors and movie fans bet on how much money a movie, such as the “Harry Potter” series, will make.
Box office bets
w The proposals: Two exchanges
where movie fans and investors alike could bet on expected box office receipts for upcoming releases. w The opposition: The six major Hollywood studios denounce the concept as legalized gambling, even though it could help them reduce risks. w Next steps: The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is to rule this month.
from Veriana Ventures, amid the last-minute opposition. A decision on the other proposal, Cantor Fitzgerald LP’s Cantor Exchange, is expected around April 20. The studios’ trade group, the Motion Picture Association of America, argues that the proposals tarnish the reputation and integrity of the movie industry by authorizing “legalized gambling on movie receipts.” The organization also complained that so many people screen movies before they are released that it would be “virtually impossible” to prevent insider trading. The backers of the proposals say they don’t need studios’ involvement to succeed, though that’s akin to
Russ Andersson, Veriana’s director of risk management, said other players with large stakes in movies, such as directors, actors, financiers and theater owners, might have doubts about the box office potential of some projects and would be willing to take part. Cantor Fitzgerald already runs the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a virtual market in which shares of celebrities and movies rise and fall with their popularity. But while that market trades on “Hollywood Dollars,” those using Cantor Exchange would use real currency to bet on a movie’s prospects. Under both proposals, no actual goods or shares in films would change hands. Trading simply would offset deals made in the real world. Movie fans and others without a direct interest in the films would be able to participate as well, absorbing some of the risks from producers and other investors. Movie financiers also could use the system to diversify their portfolios, by investing in portions of several movies rather than placing all their money in one. Cantor’s Jaycobs predicted studios will come to understand the system and see its benefits, adding that less risky outcomes could make it easier for movies to get made. He noted that when the New York Mercantile Exchange began trading crude oil futures in 1983, none of the big oil companies wanted to take part, but became major participants in subsequent years. “By Year 3, using the energy market example, I’m sure they (the studios) will participate,” he said.
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home,” Yamazaki, 39, said. Just as she was inspired by Mukai, “hopefully, I can inspire younger women as well.” Rounding out the foursome will be Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who was launched aboard a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan on Friday with two Russian men. They will arrive Sunday and settle in for a six-month stay.
Inspired by teacher
Dyson, 40, who has a doctorate in chemistry, grew up in Southern California assisting her electrician father. She wasn’t sure what to do with her life until she learned that a schoolteacher was reaching for the stars. Christa McAuliffe died trying; she was killed along with six others aboard Challenger in 1986. McAuliffe, a high school teacher, also inspired Metcalf-Lindenburger, who was 14 years old when she
attended Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala., several years after the Challenger launch accident. Now it’s MetcalfLindenburger’s turn to ride a rocket. “Of course, the shuttle has its risks. But we’ve tried to make it as safe as possible, and there are so many things that we gain from it and there are so many reasons to fly it,” she said. Metcalf-Lindenburger was a young earth-science and astronomy teacher when she stumbled onto NASA’s want ad for astronaut-educator in 2003. A student had asked how astronauts go to the bathroom in space, and an embarrassed Metcalf-Lindenburger promised to look up the answer. Today she’s no longer fazed by toilet questions. “My daughter is just potty training, and now I talk about it on a daily basis,” she said with a chuckle.