I just read the book A City on Mars (which I recommend) and they talk about how that tampon anecdote gets spread around as if it shows how clueless NASA men are, but really it’s an illustration of how risk averse NASA is. Basically, no one knew how menstruation would go in space. Because of microgravity other bodily functioning gets screwed up, so the engineers aimed for enough tampons to cover the worst possible bleeding and then added a 100% safety margin. That’s what they were asking the female astronauts, does this bandolier of tampons fulfill that requirement. They do the same thing with other tolerances, like the inflatable habitat: will this thing take five times the expected air pressure without exploding?