To be fair, I doubt the Space Shuttle could have sustained astronauts in orbit for 286 days in any case, for reasons entirely unrelated to tampons. At least not without docking to the ISS, anyway, which STS-7 didn’t do (in part because it didn’t exist yet).
Exactly! You don’t need supplies for a week, you need supplies until you make it home. Sometimes your week turns into several months.
To be fair, I doubt the Space Shuttle could have sustained astronauts in orbit for 286 days in any case, for reasons entirely unrelated to tampons. At least not without docking to the ISS, anyway, which STS-7 didn’t do (in part because it didn’t exist yet).