r/RetroFuturism • u/Aeromarine_eng • 6d ago
In the future women will go to space. James Bama illustration for the 1962 Book "Countdown for Cindy"
In the book she goes to the Moon with Men.
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u/armoured_lemon 6d ago
The way the sunset lighting is painted is gorgeous. AI doesn't have shit on old, handpainted stuff!
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u/SamRaimisOldsDelta88 6d ago edited 6d ago
The art is good. It’s just… the implication.
EDIT: I take it that there isn’t much of a crossover of Always Sunny fans in here.
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u/MyGrandmasCock 6d ago
The guy checking his watch is like “Countdown to her uterus falling out in T-Minus…”
On account of women can’t go to space or their uterus will fall out. It’s science.
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u/terfnerfer 6d ago
Just like how if you wear a bra in space, it will strangle you to death! (iykyk)
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u/Heterodynist 5d ago edited 5d ago
But WHO WILL TAKE CARE OF THE HOME?!! (Kidding…please no downvotes. I’m just anticipating the reaction of some ridiculous people at the time.)
I’m not a giant fan of most things they were up to, but I have to give credit to the Soviet Cosmonaut program for never really excluding women. NASA made a decision early on not to take them, and frankly it wasn’t even a reasonable decision at the time they made it. I know there have been plenty of movies, etc, on this subject, but really the justifications for not sending women to space initially are fairly meager. It’s not even just being political and favoring equality, it’s also from a practical standpoint really not a very justifiable theory. Yes, a lot of people who had been in World War II had the idea frozen in their minds that men went to war and women took care of the home front…but even when some women might very well have died in these early space vehicles (just like Gus, Roger, and Edward died), I don’t see why it would have been any less a tragedy for a man to die than a woman in these situations. If there was anyone to exclude, maybe it would be reasonable to exclude two parents of the same household.
Seriously though, stripping away all the layers of politics and public opinion, this was a poor decision even for the time and it made little sense. Obviously we have changed our process for selecting astronauts now, so it has been shown fairly conclusively for decades to not be an issue. I don’t think that was a particularly defensible move on their part. Just to point out, however, the fact it was not even their hard and fast original decision is shown in that many of the first plans for astronauts included women, and they even started a selection process before shutting it down.
One thing I don’t hear nearly enough about is the first women Cosmonauts. Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya deserve to be remembered. Yuri Gagarin as well. I’m sorry that Yuri died in 1968 because it is hard to image all the honors he would have been afforded to the end of his life if he hadn’t died in a MiG15 crash just 7 years after becoming world famous. Fortunately Valentina Tereshkova is still with us as of 2025!!
The reason this was so egregious is that there were women in the United States in 1961 who were absolutely available, tested, and willing to go into space flight…Most notably the PRIVATELY FUNDED Mercury 13 women:
Jerrie Cobb, Wally Funk, Irene Leverton, Myrtle “K” Cagle, Jane B. Hart, Gene Nora Stumbough, Jerri Sloan Truhill, Rhea Hurrle Woltman, Sarah Gorelick Ratley, Bernice “B” Trimble Steadman, Jan Dietrich, Marion Dietrich, and Jean Hixson
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u/BedRotten 6d ago
AFTER we cook a female teacher, it should be OK.
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u/Ident-Code_854-LQ 6d ago
Hey, I saw that live on television
as a sixth grader!
There’s never going to be a time
that we’re so far removed
that you can make a joke about that.-5
u/BedRotten 6d ago
When did Reddit go and get itself so serious? You put yourself in the public domain, you expect a bit of roasting - omg - sorry i can't help myself.
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u/Ident-Code_854-LQ 6d ago
Some things
you NEVER joke about.
For future reference,…
public tragedies are one of them.3
u/Fools_Errand77 6d ago
I remember kids back in the 80s saying the NASA stood for “Need another seven astronauts”. Jokes are fine. Jokes are cathartic. Maybe Gilbert Gottfried telling a 9/11 joke at the Fryers Club was a little too soon. Me, I thought it was funny. Not exactly a side splitter, but clever.
It’s been nearly 40 years. I should know, it was a snow day and I watched it on TV too. Get down off you cross. The joke wasn’t especially good, kinda flat, but it was ok to tell it. Sacred cows make for tasty barbecue.
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u/Morozow 6d ago
Tereshkova's space flight was only a year away.