Some people are complaining about the lack of women. Jared explains:
Starting with some energy, and my inability to write brief updates, I am just extremely proud of the NASA crew, our industry, and our international partners. We are getting into a rhythm here at NASA. Earlier this year, setbacks put the Artemis II rocket back in the VAB for…
— NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (@NASAAdmin) June 10, 2026
Active Astronaut Male-to-Female Ratios by Space Agency: NASA (USA): 21 men / 15 women (42% female); ESA (Europe): ~22 men / ~10 women (31% female); UAE (MBRSC): 3 men / 1 woman (25% female); JAXA (Japan): 5 men / 1 woman (17% female); China (CNSA): 19 men / 2 women (10% female); Roscosmos (Russia): 22 men / 1 woman (4% female).
https://share.google/aimode/W3GNp1xlv4NJT560e
FC is our Data(r)epublican*.
Full Disclosure: Data(r)epublican is also a woman. For whatever your definition of that word means…
You’re much too kind. I’m merely a nerd who used to daydream about living in the Library of Congress.
And now for a completely irrelevant & distracting AI photo from the above X thread. To help illustrate the current plans but apropos of nothing:
https://x.com/LunarCitizens/status/2064703931696009251/photo/1
Oh ha!
Back in the day it would have been more likely to see disagreements about birth order.
Is it still acceptable to tell women you’ve come a long way baby?
He paid for four women to go into space, on his own dime. His critics are being uber-retarded.
I suspect this will become a long-playing theme, especially when Elon gets his lunar industrialization project going in earnest. The ranks of construction trades hard-hats are even shorter of women than the ranks of test pilots. Factory rats, who will also be needed in quantity, are a bit more likely to be female than are hard-hats, but not to anything like the extent of the current female fraction of the US astronaut corps.
Pioneering has always been a mainly single-male pursuit for a lot of very good reasons. During the 19th century US westward expansion, the women involved were almost exclusively either farm wives or sex workers. I daresay we can expect to see their modern equivalents in roughly the same proportions among the lunar pioneers too.
I eagerly await the reaction of NOW, et al, to the first Starship-load of rentable ladies that departs Moonward.
I think if you polled Astronauts, do you want to be selected for Artemis III or available for selection on Artemis IV; we would see many opting to wait. Meanwhile, you can get a flight to ISS.
The only correct reply to people complaining about this is: Go to Hell or get a life.
With the precedent set by Artemis II I expected that “the usual suspects” would now expect, or demand, that all future Artemis missions would have at least a woman, a “person of color” and a non-American. And no cheating by having a black French female.
Forget to mention this while it was fresh, but Jared stated that part of Artemis 3’s mission will involve testing Orion’s reaction to negative-G forces. That would, presumably, be so that there are no surprises on Artemis 4 when a Starship HLS lander is supposed to do the TLI burn after Orion hooks on. The only way to test this on Artemis 3 would seem to be for the not-an-HLS-Starship-lander-but-with-a-docking-collar SpaceX test article to fire up some or all of its engines after the Artemis 3 Orion hooks on.
No need to do anything like a full TLI burn, of course, but it looks as though the Artemis 3 crew will be getting a bit of eyes-out practice – of whatever duration.
Fun times ahead.