…over four decades later. Via Jim Oberg, here’s an interesting article about the first woman in space.

This part I found a little puzzling, though:

Astronaut Mary Ellen Weber , who went up twice on the space shuttle, was also in attendance at the dinner, as was Lori Garver, whose plans to go into space were shelved in 2003 after the Columbia tragedy.

Huh?

What did Columbia have to do with Lori shelving her plans to go into space? She was going to go on Soyuz. I thought she shelved her plans because she couldn’t find a sponsor to pay for it. Of course, it doesn’t say she did it because of Columbia, but that’s certainly the obvious inference to me, else why mention it?