Sergei Korolev, the head of the Soviet space program, was upset when he was told to stage another show in space, this time in the interests of sexual equality. A "female experiment" was justified by the need "to study the diverse influence of a space flight on the female organism."

Five women were selected out of a thousand. After passing a state exam on general space training, they were officially introduced to chief designer Korolev. He asked them to tell him about themselves. Then he inquired why they wanted to fly into space.

By the end of the interview, his mood had changed for the worse, and he complained bitterly to his closest colleagues about the caliber of the team. None of them, he said, knew anything about rockets or other space hardware.

In line with the established practice, the name of the first cosmonaut was announced only immediately before departure for the space center. By that time, everyone knew what the decision was, but each of the female cosmonauts hoped that some miracle would send her into space... It did not happen. Two women - Valentina Tereshkova and her back-up, Irina Solovyova - emerged in space helmets on the launching pad.

Tereshkova had a difficult flight. Although she felt bad and did not manage to fulfill all her assignments, she put a brave face on it and even asked the space center to extend her flight. "My only wish is to see her landed; she cost me half of my life," Korolev lamented.

In the meantime, manned flights were gaining momentum: a new Soyuz spaceship was being developed, five Voskhod space vehicles were in production, and several Vostok spacecraft were supposed to be put into orbit. Plans were laid for nine flights in 1966, 14 in 1967, and 21 in 1968. But women were not part of these plans.

Korolev declared that he did not need a female team, that women did not justify themselves, and that one flight with women was more than enough for him. Nonetheless, on two occasions someone came up with an idea of launching a strictly female flight, and even formed the main and back-up teams.

In particular, there was a plan to send Valentina Ponomareva and Irina Solovyova on a 15-day Voskhod flight with a spacewalk. Zhanna Yerkina and Tatyana Kuznetsova were to be the back-up crew. But the preparations were sluggish and limited to simulators. Korolev died before long, and the Voskhod series was shut down.

In 1969, the female group was disbanded. Tereshkova was the only one left. Men would have space to themselves for almost 20 years.

Soviet women only returned to space in the 1980s, in response to an American program. In 1982, Svetlana Savitskaya made a flight on a Soyuz ship and the orbital station Salyut-7. Two years later she became the first woman to walk in space.

Another Russian woman, Yelena Kondakova, went to space 12 years later. She made two flights - one on a Soyuz ship and the other on an American shuttle. Her 169 days in the Mir orbital station set a record for length of time a woman has stayed in space.

There are no female Russian cosmonauts today. Nadezhda Kuzhelnaya, who was selected in 1994, was the last to leave the team without flying.

There was a rule in Soviet cosmonautics that if a cosmonaut was picked for a flight and trained for the back-up crew, he or she would be included in the main crew for the following flight.

Kuzhelnaya was trained as a flight engineer on the first Russian mission to the International Space Station (ISS) but was unexpectedly transferred to another team. Later on she backed up French astronaut Claudie Haignere, who had worked on Mir before and visited the ISS. Nadezhda was unlucky - she never flew to space.

Of 17 Soviet and Russian female cosmonauts trained for space flights, only three made it to space.

In America, the first group of women was tested for readiness for space flights in early 1961. Doctors were surprised to find that they showed better results than the men. But NASA also turned down female astronauts.

Its officials attributed this to President Dwight Eisenhower's 1959 instruction that astronauts should only be recruited from the military (for similar reasons Soviet women chosen for space flights received the rank of junior lieutenant, even before Tereshkova's spectacular mission). The first American woman, Sally Ride, flew to space only in 1983.

Today, there are about 50 female astronauts from several countries, including Britain, Canada, France, Japan and Korea.

A couple of years ago, the heads of the Chinese space program started talking about a plan to recruit a female space team from college and university students. A relevant announcement was made on the eve of International Women's Day on March 8, but to the disappointment of many it turned out only to be a joke.

Yury Zaitsev is an expert at the Institute of Space Studies.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

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