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I’ve always wondered if NASAs obsession with “perfect astronauts” really had enough merit to warrant itself. My personal conspiracy theory was it was more about

• mzkply 5y ago
  Sure it does, and it has nothing to do with another country. They will take 10 years teaching astronauts about everything from orbital dynamics to spacewalking to Siberian survival. It's literally millions of dollars spent on one person, so you need to maximize the probability of success. It's why they go for perfectly healthy people, both physically and mentally. Can't have someone quickly out of breath, or someone who breaks down in a stressful situation.
• ksdale 5y ago
  I always thought of it as a tolerances thing. The stronger/fitter (for certain definitions of those words), and the smarter (ditto), the more slack you have built into the system. On the average space flight, an average person is just fine, but when things go sideways, it's better to have someone with very exceptional abilities. That's also not to say that seeking "perfect" astronauts selects for the most ideal abilities, but that was my thinking about what they were going for.
• caturopath 5y ago
  Given the large number of people wanting the job and the low number of positions, pruning it in even a tiny-merit way seems like a nice strategy to employ. It's not like you're cutting anyone who could be predicted to be a gamechanger; there's only so much utility you can get out of an astronaut, I think.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]