...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?

While the Columbia accident did cause Russia to suspend the tourist flights for a couple years, that had nothing to do with Garver and her failure to get a flight. She was trying to get a seat on the October 2002 Soyuz mission to the ISS - see this Space.com article - and Columbia was destroyed on Feb.1.03. From what I've read, her campaign to find sponsors as a "soccer mom in space" was going quite well until Lance Bass came along. All the press attention switched to him and her project quickly fell apart. Unfortunately, his funding eventually fell through as well and so neither flew.