Slashdot Mirror
What Drugs Do Astronauts Take?
astroengine writes "Science fiction is stuffed full of examples of pill-popping space explorers and aliens enjoying psychedelic highs. After all, space is big; it can get boring/scary/crazy up there. It's little wonder, then, that our current space explorers consume a cocktail of uppers, downers, tranquilizers and alcohol to get the job done. Robert Lamb on tranquilizers in the space station: 'Sure, it hardly makes for a civilized evening aboard ISS, but it beats someone blowing the hatch because they think they saw something crawling on one of the solar panels.'"
That ever useful tool. However would we have gone to the stars without it?
Yes, according to a 2007 report from the Associated Press, astronauts keep a few tranqs on hand in case anyone goes all suicidal or psychotic in space. NASA recommends binding the individual's wrists and ankles with duct tape (ever the space traveler's friend!), strapping them down with a bungee cord and, if necessary, sticking them with a tranquilizer.
Has any sci-fi show other than Firefly ever mentioned duct tape?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You ever watch C beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate... on weed?
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
. . . the bong is busted. First the bog, and now the bong . . . hopefully the crack pipe will keep going . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'm not sure what they take, but whatever they are, they are out of this world...
I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.
Please do try a diazepam or alprazolam Dave, they will surely calm you down.
If there's one thing I can do, man, is fly when I'm stoned
...for all the secret space sex experiments the NASA conspiracy nuts think are going on, and because they need to keep their bat servicable when they casually let it slip that they're an astronaut in all the bars around KSC.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Orange flavor
Aldrin took communion on the moon? I had never heard that.
"Do they smoke grass out in space, Bowie? Or do they smoke astroturf?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
WTF is slashdot doing linking to an article from Fox News?
It's bad enough linking to UK stories from the Daily Mail, but Faux News is taking the piss.
.
I know this 'coz once, my grandfather, who built space ships with us in our sofa when we were kids, found a marijuana syringe on the moon.
Antiemetics (that is, anti-throw-up / anti-motion-sickness)
Not having gravity to "set things straight" can mess things up royally (in several ways)
how long until
Perhaps it's my limited understanding of the word "do" at fault. I can only think of it in the present tense, rather than the future conditionals attached to such as "might". This leads me to have all kinds of misunderstandings, like wondering why they're taking pills to counteract a dust (!) that nobody's been closer than 230,000 miles to in the last 40 years. Or why the articles blathers on about zombies and CIA truth serum when talking about a sleeping/motion sickness pill that's been OTC for longer than NASA has been chartered. Or why NASA is having them take a "cocktail" to "get the job done" which would, if the description is accurate, prevent the job from getting done if not kill them (alcohol + uppers + downers + tranqs? Anyone remember Karen Ann Quinlan?). Quoting details from the equally unqualified and/or wrong doesn't dilute the article's idiocy. The content could have made a perfectly good article. Too bad the writer felt unequal to the job of writing a real article as you'd expect in a science magazine.
This article should be in "Entertainment". Or, if we're to keep such trash under science, we should have some subclasses that apply, like 'bullshit', 'lies', and 'science? what's that?'. Or maybe we just need to change the "news for nerds, stuff that matters" to "stuff that might fit into the popular subjects here, and might be real, or not; we're not sure, we don't read it".
Is this the result of voting on suitability of submissions? If so, maybe we ought to look into having editors that actually know something about the area they cover and approve articles based on content rather than side effects. It appears that ironically 'games' is getting more serious treatment than 'science'. Part of the problem is the 'science' articles being written, such as TFA. But the fix for that is the same fix for including decent science articles.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Whatever they use, it sure as hell gets them High!
Anyone got a light for my sig?
Kind of like how we tell our kids that all drugs are always unconditionally bad, unless they're handed out by mommy and daddy? This story is an interesting nexus of two things people lie to their kids about. If NASA were so full of American grit, they wouldn't have a problem getting Congress to get funding for (a return trip to the moon|an expedition to Mars|a space elevator).
There is almost always more to the truth than what we tell our kids, because of our own moral hangups and personal inadequacies. This is why, once they become teenagers and get their first trickled-down distorted taste of what the real world is actually going to be like, they rebel and hate you. It's the least they owe to the people who have lied to them their entire lives.
Drugs are like cars, or power tools, or guns. They're incredibly useful tools, but if you don't respect them they'll kill you.
And you should never mix them with cars, or power tools, or guns.
Unless you're an astronaut.
--Obyron
More like:
"Spock.....there's.....a man....on.....the wing!
If you want to do Shatner right, you've got to include both the unnecessary pauses and the emphasis on the wrong words.
That was a great old Twilight Zone episode, though.
This ain't rocket surgery.
, but he and NASA kept it quiet to prevent a repeat of the Apollo 8 controversy, where NASA was sued by an atheist group over the reading of Genesis from lunar orbit on Xmas eve, 1968.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
No, you weren't shrooming. That's the actual movie.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?