Joan Higginbotham became the third African American woman to go into space in December 2006 after waiting almost two decades to reach her long-held ambition
An ex-NASA astronaut who waited for nearly 20 years to be allowed to blast off into orbit has revealed what’s it’s really like in space – and what she really thinks of Blue Origin passenger, Lauren Sanchez.
Joan Higginbotham, 60, became only the third African American woman to go into space when she spent 12 days on board Space Shuttle Discovery in December 2006.
The determined electrical engineer, who’s now an Astronaut Ambassador for the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, revealed how meal times were surprisingly fancy and how every single minute of the day up in space is on a timeline.
Joan, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, said: “Every single minute of the day is on a timeline, so you could go to the laptop and see where you are in the day and say, ‘oh, I have 30 minutes left for my meal, and at nine o’clock I need to start this particular task.’
“When you woke up, you had about half an hour for morning hygiene and breakfast, and then your day started.
“You had a wash rag that you’d wet and just wipe yourself down with. Obviously you could brush your teeth. I’d spit the toothpaste into the wash rag and then put it into the wet trash.”
Meal times were surprisingly fancy after the astronauts, alongside dieticians, had attended tasting classes to put together a meal plan, often with their favourite dishes which, for Joan, consisted of Mexican-style eggs and beef enchiladas.
Joan said: “My commander loved shrimp cocktail, he had a shrimp cocktail at every meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
Joan was with a crew of seven as a ‘mission specialist’, working to assemble and upgrade the International Space Station.
She said: “Our mission was to take up another piece of the space station hardware because we were still building it at the time. We took up about 6000 pounds of equipment and supplies that were needed.”
It had taken Joan over a decade of intense training and a competitive application process to get into space at all.
NASA rejected her initial application because she didn’t have a technical master’s degree, but a business-related one. They offered to pay for the next course, and in April 1996, she reapplied.
She made it into the 120 invited to interview, a gruelling process that took place in Houston, in addition to thorough physical, psychological, and FBI background checks.
After doing the interview and waiting six months while NASA assessed the test results, Joan received the news that she had made the final cut.
She said: “Once I was selected, it was roughly a year and a half of training that we did, and we learned how to fly T38 supersonic jets. Before we did that, we had to do land and water survival.
“We had one of the largest classes ever because we were about to start building the International Space Station, and we had a lot of international partners.”
She credited the mission with altering her perspective on life.
She said: “It gave me a greater appreciation for my fellow humans, and we need to be kinder to each other because we’re all in this together. The other thing that changed for me was the way I look at Planet Earth, because there’s only one planet Earth. It’s the only place we have to live, and so I’m more mindful.”
Speaking about the more recent Blue Origin flight paid for by billionaire Jeff Bezos with his now-wife, Lauren Sanchez on board, that lasted for just 11 minutes, Joan admitted she was in support of it.
She said: “I think anyone that has the opportunity and wants the opportunity to go to space, should go to space.
“It was very different from what I’m used to when astronauts are launching. They go into quarantine, and you can’t see them.
“They came out after getting all glammed up, and we’re touching them and talking to them.
“It’s like this is so weird. And there was a little procession as they went to the pad and we stood on either side, and people had cowbells, then we sat down, they launched it, and like ten minutes later they’re back. It was just very different from what I’m used to.”
Joan believes that commercialised space travel is on the way and may well be possible for the general population in the next five to ten years.
She said: “I think at some point it should become more economically feasible.”
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