Unsanctioned Behavior

On Saturday, a Soyuz landed in Russia carrying three crewmembers home from the International Space Station including two females: Peggy Whitson, the first female ISS commander and new American record-holder for the most time spent in space, and Yi So-yeon, South Korea’s first astronaut. This was the first time the number of women onboard any space vehicle has outnumbered the men.
The Soyuz had a guidance problem during entry that resulted in a downmode to the ballistic entry — a steeper trajectory that resulted in the crew experiencing up to 10 times the force of gravity (much more than the normal 4 g’s) and a landing more than 250 miles short of where the Russian Space Agency expected them to come down. It took half an hour to locate the crew (who were all ok), which was much improved from the landing in 2003 where a similar error occured and the crew’s whereabouts were unknown for two hours. This time, the crew had a satellite phone which essentially allowed them to call and say “ok, we’re back, here we are, come get us!”
This is not the first time this has occured. There have been at least 2-3 ballistic entries in the last 5 years. Obviously there are still a few problems with the Soyuz entry guidance — although I will fully concede that the Soyuz is perhaps the most reliable of all space vehicles. In the grand scheme of things, it is definitely a good thing that the vehicle has an entry guidance downmode to the steep ballistic re-entry that, while rough on the crew, is still survivable. However, there’s certainly no excuse for the quotes in this Associated Press article:
“The most important thing is that the crew is healthy and well,” Federal Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov told a post-landing news conference. “The landing occurred normally, but according to a back-up plan — the descent was a ballistic trajectory.”
Perminov said engineers would examine the capsule to determine what caused the glitch, though he blamed the Soyuz crew for not informing Mission Control about the unusual descent.
Later, Perminov was asked about the presence of two women on the Soyuz, and referred to a naval superstition that having women aboard a ship was bad luck.
“You know in Russia, there are certain bad omens about this sort of thing, but thank God that everything worked out successfully,” he said. “Of course in the future, we will work somehow to ensure that the number of women will not surpass” the number of men.
Challenged by a reporter, Perminov responded: “This isn’t discrimination. I’m just saying that when a majority (of the crew) is female, sometimes certain kinds of unsanctioned behaviour or something else occurs, that’s what I’m talking about.”
He did not elaborate.
I usually try to let stuff like this roll off my back, but COME ON. This is a high-up manager in the Russian Space Agency, NASA’s #1 international partner. To imply that having multiple women onboard a spacecraft is bad luck, or leads to any kind of strange behavior — or to even imply that part of the reason the Soyuz landed off-course is due to the two women onboard — is simply unacceptable.