Hillary Clinton Makes Ridiculous Demand to NASA After First All-Female Spacewalk Is Canceled
Hillary Clinton wants her all-female spacewalk, even if that’s as impossible as her assuming the presidency tomorrow.
Let me explain: NASA was supposed to make history when two women did a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Friday. Because of practical concerns regarding the spacesuits, however, that had to be changed.
“NASA astronaut Anne McClain had trained in both medium- and large-sized upper torsos — what NASA calls ‘the shirt of the spacesuit,'” NPR reported.
“But last week, she wore a medium on her first spacewalk, where she helped swap out aging batteries that store energy collected by the station’s solar panels.
“‘Based (on) her experience in the first spacewalk in the series, McClain determined that although she has trained in both medium and large torsos, the medium, which she wore last Friday during the spacewalk, was a better fit for her in space,’ NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz told NPR in an email.
“Two mediums existed on the ISS, but only one was prepped for a spacewalk. Instead of devoting extensive crew time to make the extra medium-sized suit space-worthy by Friday, NASA decided to restaff: Nick Hague will go in McClain’s place and do the walk with Christina Koch.”
This was the U.K. Guardian’s treatment of the story on Twitter:
This led to Hillary Clinton tweeting a barbed reply:
Girl power! That’s a pretty sick burn against the patriarchy until — and I suggest you do this before you tweet something out — you think about it.
Firstly, Clinton didn’t even read the story that she was tweeting about, which would have explained the circumstances behind the switch-out and the fact that the choice was made for safety reasons.
However, you still could have argued that they could have delayed the walk — still not the best argument, since you’re not exactly privy to the practical considerations behind that, but it’s still an argument. Or you could have said that NASA should have anticipated this and prepped another medium. Again, it’s pure Monday-morning mission controlling and it doesn’t erase the fact that McClain essentially pulled herself from the walk, but you could get away with it.
Here is what’s not not a reasonable line of thinking: “Make another suit.”
Oh, that sounds reasonable enough. Quickly, put together another expensive space-prepped suit on Earth. Get the Russians to rush a Soyuz spacecraft into position on the launchpad in Kazakhstan and blast it into the wild blue yonder. Dock the Soyuz, unpack the medium-sized upper torso, put it on McClain and get her spacewalking stat!
Easy peasy, and an efficient use of resources at that.
This is apparently the thinking of a woman who believes low Earth orbit is well within the purview of FedEx or DHL and that a heavy, expensive medium-sized spacesuit component is something they would deliver.
Thankfully, the only thing this ham-handed suggestion launched is a long line of pantsuit jokes in response. Not that those are original or anything, but it beats the idea that NASA can launch spacesuits into orbit at will.
I hope Clinton keeps on churning out pithy, thoughtless responses like this, if only to remind America why she should never have been our president.
