The Cold War was a scary but exciting time - for (almost) every threat of looming nuclear war, there were great strides being made into the future of science and progress, and some of them were by some badass Russian women just like Tanya and Nadia of The Witch Who Came In From The Cold...
On 16 June 1963, within hours of Valentina Tereshkova becoming the first woman in space, she realised that the scientists and engineers who had worked for years on the project had made two mistakes, one small but enraging, one possibly terminal.
Re-united with her spacecraft, Vostok 6, in an epic exhibition at the Science Museum in London, she recalled the shock of the discovery. She had food, water, and tooth paste, but no toothbrush.
“My toothbrush was nothing compared to the fact that the space craft was programmed to ascend, but not to descend. Now that was a mistake.”
If ground control had not succeeded in sending and installing a new computer program, instead of returning to Earth - where she parachuted safely out of the craft from nearly seven kilometres up - the fragile craft in which she would orbit Earth 48 times over two days, 22 hours and 50 minutes, would have spun on and on into outer space for ever. As for the toothbrush, “I had tooth paste, and water, and my hands,” she said.
She asked that the engineer who so nearly cost her her life not be punished, and was asked in return never to reveal the truth – and never spoke of it for 30 years, she said. “Cosmonauts can keep their word like men and women - particularly women.”
Read more of Tereshkova's story here!
With her talent for solo missions and secret keeping, we think Valentina would have made a formidable teammate for Tatiana and Nadezhda- but we'll count ourselves lucky to have a real-world hero like her to look up to.
