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Your Chance to be an Astronaut
codewarrior78411 writes "NASA posted a hiring notice for new astronauts Tuesday, on usajobs.com, seeking for the first time in almost 30 years men and women to fly aboard spacecraft other than the shuttle. The agency is seeking 10 to 15 new faces for three to six-month missions aboard the international space station." Requirements include 'Must be a U.S. citizen between 5-foot-2 and 6-foot-3 in height (to squeeze into Russia's three-passenger Soyuz capsule)' 'At least a bachelor's degree in engineering, a biological or physical science, or mathematics' 'three years of relevant professional experience' and most interestingly 'Vision correctable to 20/20. For the first time, the space agency will consider applicants who have undergone successful refractive eye surgery.'
No, I'm sorry, they wanted a degree in engineering, math or science.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
I'm a bit curious about the vision requirement. While I understand the need for good vision, what is the need for 20/20? The real work of flying the craft is usually left up to computers, and I'm not sure of what tasks couldn't be performed with adequate vision. I suppose one could argue about the docking operations with the ISS...
Of course I may be coming at this from the wrong angle. Vision that isn't correctable to 20/20 is probably pretty bad to start.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
What would be the point. To be the first person on Mars? I don't see that the rush to get a person on Mars needs to be so great that we consider a suicide trip. Mars isn't going anywhere in the next 50 years. I'd wager that anything we can find there, we could still find in 1000 years.
It is one thing to consider a suicide mission that has some lifesaving purpose, but throwing lives away for a feather in your cap isn't worth it. It is definately not worth it when simple restraint and patience will result in an even more successful outcome:
A manned mission to Mars and a return trip.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
1) science / exploration
2) getting ordinary folks to think "hey - that could be me/my kids up there someday! Cool!"
The reason the Space Race was so popular in the '50s and '60s wasn't so much the 'Red Menace', but ordinary folks (kids chief among them) to fantasize about being spacemen and spacewomen. SciFi was a HUGE factor in having folks dream of space as a destination in the first place.
Sure, the odds of, say, terraforming Mars in my lifetime is pretty much nil, but the ideas of adventure and exploration? Especially in a world that pretty much has had human eyes hovering over nearly every square hectare of it by now? It's a pretty damned cool idea.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If you are interested, I wouldn't discount any degree. Especially one in Psychology. With all this talk of extended missions, having an onboard psychologist might not be too far fetched.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
What's different about Mars? The original post didn't say the food would run out in less than 100 years.
True, but astronauts are notoriously wary of doctors and psychologists, because they are the two people whose office you can walk into an astronaut and walk out grounded. And can you imagine being a psych specialist on a Mars mission, being cooped up with the crew for 90+ days, them knowing part of your job is to evaluate their mental state? Of course you'd have to have other functions, because the cost of a Mars mission will be high enough that no one will be able to justify the cost of sending a psychologist along solely to monitor the crew.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Must not care about frittering valuable resources away on pointless flag-waving exercises to keep the pork-hungry defence industry and adolescent males (of all ages) happy that the world of Star Trek is only a matter of working out the engineering.Or as the Register just put it: Nobel-winning boffin slams ISS, manned spaceflight 'Infantile fixation on putting people into space'
There is something in that - certainly the Shuttle & ISS have been very poor value for money. It would have been way better to just keep Apollo going (maybe on a slower budget). Skylab was already going and there were full-on lunar bases ready-to-go based on Apollo hardware - and if rolled out slowly, for far less money/year than the Shuttle/ISS boondongle..
There is real science that could be done still by a manned lunar/mars base - but yes, sending a $1 billion-a-throw Shuttle up so we can run school-science-fair experiments on a $100 billion ISS doesnt really cut it. At this time, just setting up X-prize type funds seems the cheapest way to push development..
"A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it." - Churchill
So going from one cave to the next is ok. Going from one house to the next is ok. Going from one city to the next is ok. Going from one continent to the next is ok. But work toward going from one planet to another... HELL NO???
If you have a better plan than the one in action involving space stations and the craft they are using (poorly) to make this happen, then by all means, put it into action. Otherwise, shut up. It's not like private enterprise isn't getting involved. It is. If you are one of those people who thinks that the development of the bicycle, the automobile, the boat, and the plane were all great ideas, but we should stop when crossing the boundary of space, stick with living in the basement.
I'm holding out for the security guard position on a space station.
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -D. Adams
"sometimes he felt that his whole life was a dream, and he wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."