The likelihood of an all male Artemis III crew #shorts

By Dr. Becky

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So a lot has been said about this all male Artemis III crew already, but let me add tha purely from a statistics perspective if you draw 3 people randomly from the current list of 37 active NASA astronauts, and 1 person from the 11 active ESA astronauts, the probability you get an all male crew is 14%. The most likely scenario is 3 men, one woman at around 38%, that’s what we had for the Artemis II crew, and the second most likely scenario is 2 men, 2 women at 34%. Now of course crew selection is not random, it's based on experience and availability, but if you assume that gender is independent of those things, which it should be, then these stats still apply here. So the Artemis III crew isn’t statistically anomalous in that it’s all male once again, let’s just add it to the very long list of all male crews there’ve been for spaceflight missions. I think it just feels especially frustrating because we keep hearing that progress is being made towards equality and equal representation