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I saw a BBC documentary where they interviewed every astronaut who had walked on the moon who would speak to them about life. Most were total and utter cranks!
by harry8 7y ago
I saw a BBC documentary where they interviewed every astronaut who had walked on the moon who would speak to them about life. Most were total and utter cranks! Strangest thing I've ever seen. You can understand why once you've seen it. Peaking at a young age, the incredible stress of being a test pilot and watching so many colleagues die through no fault of their own. The adulation for surviving, which really wasn't up to you. Etc. I have huge sympathy for all the Astronuats - not that they'd want it and good for them.
But I'm not taking an astronauts advice on literally anything because they are or were an astronaut. Doing that ends up in the realms of spoon bending. If an astronaut has an idea it stands or falls on the merit of the idea. If you want a heuristic, most astronaut's ideas aren't worth your time. It's a sad conclusion to come to and I'm sure it's unpopular because we love having glamorous heroes but there it is.
- ken 7y agoI agree with your criticism of hero worship, and the personal issues with the early pilots / astronauts, but modern space flight is nothing like that. It's still dangerous, but our success rate with rockets is far, far better than it was in the 1960's. Complex systems, as Hadfield notes, succeed because of diligence and cooperation, not luck and cowboyism. Most astronauts in the 21st century don't have 1-in-4 of their colleagues killed on the job.
- harry8 7y agoAstronauts are still the monkeys in a can. The success or failure now as it always was is in the engineering team, not the warm body who (to paraphrase Carl Sagan) is /still/ really only present for PR purposes rather than to optimise the advancement of technology and science. Head of space flight engineering or whatever at NASA - yeah? Heuristic would be listen to them, they might know something. Monkey in the can on top of the fire-cracker? If they do know something it's more coincidence with their usefulness in PR than anything else. Sad but true. If NASA abandoned human flight tomorrow they'd probably get a lot more bang for buck - other than in PR because we love us a person to fuel our imagination and I am no different there. How flippin' cool is it ride the fireball into space?!?
- dragonsky67 7y agoI think you are working from a false premise. Modern astronauts are many things, monkeys in a can is not one of them. They have many roles and skills ranging form engineering to teaching and many things in between. They perform engineering and procedural review. Carry out public outreach that inspires scientists and engineers of the future. Manage operations during launch and in space operations. and are involved in most parts of approval of new equipment they will be using. Yes they have a PR role, but getting photographed on the top of a rocket is a very small part of that.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoThey're only present for PR purposes? Yeah, um... let's see if I remember right... Apollo 11: Had to make a visual adjustment because the pre-mission selected landing area was a boulder field. We didn't have computers that could do visual field processing in 1969. Without the humans, we could have lost the lander. One of the Apollos (13?): The guidance system was all messed up (maybe had reset after the explosion, and reset to being on the pad?) One of the astronauts manually shot the stars to get correct current position data to input into the guidance system. Without this human intervention, the mission would have been (literally) lost. So... yeah. Not exactly monkeys in a can, just there for PR.
- darkmighty 7y agoYou are wildly uninformed when it comes to astronaut roles. Could the ISS be automated? Perhaps, but at astronomical costs. And most tasks would still require remote operation. Also many experiments are done precisely on humans themselves. In general modern astronauts have many roles -- flight managers, technicians (doing and evaluating repairs), scientists, experimental subjects, and finally yes communicators to an extent (frankly great to inspire people). Obvious Hadfield isn't a perfect human being and I'm sure he doesn't like adulation, but his vast set of skills, including communication effectiveness is quite impressive (and music ability -- check out his space video clip!). I assure you he's no crank (perhaps you're biased by early space program people that were test pilots). I recommend checking out his and other ISS youtube videos to get an idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hj3GnPRsJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hj3GnPRsJ4
- themodelplumber 7y agoWhich documentary? I'd really like to see it before passing any judgment. There are a lot of really sharp astronauts out there, current and former. NASA also employs a confidential psychological evaluation process for astronauts. I have heard some argue that the process has been biased, in the past, toward outcomes that may produce astronauts who, for example, struggle--relative to their other strengths, that is--to keep a handle on the emergence of emotion or complex experiential outcomes. (And I would mention that many of us humans down here on earth fall into this boat as well)
- harry8 7y agoIt was BBC world. It was a series, one moon walker per episode and I'm guessing 20 years ago. I'm not turning up the needle in the bbc astronaut haystack for you I'm sorry. There really should be a list of every BBC doco somewhere. Not turning that up either.
- maxioatic 7y agoReminds me of the book The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. He describes the start of the US space program, being a test pilot, public reaction to being a astronaut... Astronauts were treated like gods back then, or as Wolfe called them "single combat warriors". I think a lot of that sentiment still exists today.