[secondForty]

Seconded.

Perhaps the parent poster didn't intend to offend, and just wanted to pass along some personal information? It's hard to tell. To be clear, this type of gender-based ban is rediculous.

A brief search on this shows there's a much more balanced information out there. Here are some interesting snips from a CS Monitor article on Tereshkova.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0614/First-woman-in-sp...

She actually solved the first big problem in her flight: On the first day, the ship's autopilot mistakenly steered her away from Earth, leaving her facing the prospect of being lost in space.

After her trip, the Soviet space program canceled any future trips for women, and indeed, Tereshkova remained the only woman to go to space for almost two decades. In 1982, the Soviets launched a second woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, and the next year, America sent up Sally Ride. Since then, 48 other American women have gone to space, but only one other Russian: Yelena V. Kondakova, in 1994.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/science/space/sally-ride-t...

[huhtenberg]

> She actually solved the first big problem in her flight: On the first day, the ship's autopilot mistakenly steered her away from Earth, leaving her facing the prospect of being lost in space.

The Cristian Science Monitor is an excellent source of information on the Soviet space program, but the autopilot malfunction was exactly what triggered Tereshkova's meltdown. It took considerable effort for the Control Center to make her calm down and follow the instructions to reset the autopilot. She was by and large unfit for the mission and she ended up in space only because Soviet Union needed to launch a woman into orbit.

[aasarava]

Do you have any sources for this other than, literally, "dad's dad's friend who heard a rumor?"

[huhtenberg]

From what I understand my grandafather's friend was a part of the launch crew, so it's not exactly "dad's dad's friend + rumor", but here you go anyways, courtesy of Wikipedia -

http://www.webcitation.org/6Ho9TOB7t

You want this part -

  В космос Терешкова слетала. Это потрясающая, мужественная 
  женщина, но ведь она не выполнила ни единого своего задания!
  Ее тошнило в космосе, она теряла сознание, мне Королев
  рассказывал. Тогда же при мне он сказал: «Пока я жив, ни
  одна женщина в космос больше не полетит». И двадцать лет
  наши женщины не были в космосе.

I trust you can handle the translation.