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Entire South Korean Space Programme Shuts Down As Sole Astronaut Quits
An anonymous reader writes The entire South Korean space program has been forced to shut down after its only astronaut resigned for personal reasons. Yi So-yeon, 36, became the first Korean in space in 2008 after the engineer was chosen by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) to lead the country's $25m space project. Her resignation begs questions of KARI regarding whether she was the right person to lead the program and whether the huge cost of sending her into space was a waste of taxpayer's money.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe they should have, I don't know, trained a few other people as well?
...just the manned part.
"Her resignation begs questions of KARI regarding whether she was the right person to lead the program.."
Not at all - 6 years of service, why can't she resign?
Always have a back-up.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
She was afraid of heights!
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
If the whole project was dependant on the body they send in to space then they had bigger problems and they didn't have a space program at all. What they had was a person they put on a russian space ship and then FTA stuck in front of people to say what it was like.
If that is the case and the program was a program of 1 person then why would she have stayed? No development, nothing interesting, no reason to be there.
Give up. Language evolves.
With that being said, it's silly to rely on only one person for your ENTIRE SPACE PROGRAM. That's a lot of stress and, no matter how intelligent, one person cannot conceivably perform all the desired tasks/research/whatever else astronauts do.
The whole trip was a "matter of national pride " and little more than a PR stunt in response to China's space program. She spent 11 days on the ISS on what amounts to space tourism, the average stay for real astronauts is 2-7 months. After returning to earth her job has been little more than to be paraded around and to give speeches.
It's not evolution it's erosion, we are losing the original meaning and gaining nothing.
horror vacui
In 2010, she began a new journey at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business to pursue more down-to-earth endeavors in the private sector.
Loosely translated:
Government jobs in Korea are similar to the ones in the West... they're no place for the gifted.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Lots of nations tried different ways of getting into space. Some like the UK and Australia did deals with the USA.
East Germany looked to the Soviet Union.
Long term the only way for a nation to get into space is to do do India did. Fully understand every aspect of the basic science and have your own hardware and software production, then move onto the next easy stage of space technology.
Other space nations will give you a free ride for the press or sell you tech but will not give away their own hard work.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Q: Why did Albanian airforce not participate in WW2? A: The pilot was sick.
Sounds similar to SK's Space Program issue.
Meanwhile, many other words and phrases over the centuries have lost the original meaning while "gaining nothing" and yet we're all still here!
Language most certainly evolves with no regard to ones opinion.
It's not evolution it's erosion, we are losing the original meaning and gaining nothing.
New words with new nuances, and reusing old worlds with new nuances happens all the time too. English is richer by far than it was 2 centuries ago. We may have gained nothing on this particular transaction, but we're far and away net positive.
First Korean in space?!? One of these stories must be wrong then...
In this case language evolves through ignorance. We seek to counter that particular form of "evolution."
"Beg the question" is a commonly misused phrase that you probably confused with the uncommonly used phrase "begs questions".
You are apparently objecting to something that did not even exist except in your own mind.
I suppose if I were not a native English speaker, I could not have a conversation with you because you would be constantly correcting me on idioms I supposedly misused, only to find I simply mistranslated something that you otherwise, if not for your thickheadedness, would have understood just fine.
Mr. or Miss "as if you care", we don't care, and we would be better off without you.
Here's why: Every year "the dictionary", read as various dictionary publishers, routinely add new words that are in common use. Why? To document their usage and meaning.
Here's why also: "The dictionary" commonly adds meanings to words because of the different ways they are used. Encyclopedic dictionaries typically give date ranges for when they were introduced as meaning that.
http://dictionary.reference.co...
According to dictionary.com, "prompt" as you used it above could mean any of 14 different things. How am I, as a simple grammar Nazi, supposed to determine which of 14 different meanings you intended? Maybe I can narrow it down to 5 or so by diagramming your sentence.
Here's an idea: go back in time and tell everyone who uses "beg the question" incorrectly to FOAD before their idiocy becomes popular.
If you can't do that, go back in time to the first instance of you reading some idiot complaining about incorrect usage of "beg the question" and tell that person the fight is already lost because people are too stupid to use words correctly.
If you can't do that, stick a sock in it and let us get back to talking about things.
The headline is entirely misleading. South Korea's space program is NOT shutting down. Just the manned portion, as with her departure they have no more astronauts on staff.
Give up. Language evolves.
While I have made this same argument here on Slashdot numerous times - particularly when, a few years ago, people took umbrage because "hacker" was supplanting "cracker" - in this case you'd first need some supporting evidence that the phrase "begs the question" is actually changing meaning in popular speech.
As far as I can tell, that is not the case - the submitter simply misused the phrase.
#DeleteChrome
Give up. Language evolves.
Sure. But that doesn't mean it should, at least not in every case. In this case, it shouldn't. Fighting back is appropriate.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
And the only questions this situation raises are why did their space program have only one astronaut? Why is an entire nation's space endeavor forced to shut down, because one person resigned?
The anonymous reader's summary raises completely ridiculous issues, such as, "...whether she was the right person to lead the program and whether the huge cost of sending her into space was a waste of taxpayer's money." These are childish accusations which insinuate that the blame should be put on the astronaut, instead of the space program.
The glass is neither half full nor half empty. It is dirty and I don't do dishes!
Very few "figureheads" last 6 years before deciding to try doing something else with their life, like have one.
Give up. Language evolves.
Sure. But that doesn't mean it should, at least not in every case. In this case, it shouldn't. Fighting back is appropriate.
I beg to differ, and I will fight your efforts.
"Beg the question" was a poor choice for the English name for the logical fallacy initially, and the entire issue can be sidestepped by using a self-explanatory term like "presumes the argument".
The modern usage form, meaning "prompts the question", is perfectly cromulent and befits the parsing of the phrase.
Give up the dark side.
It's not evolution it's erosion, we are losing the original meaning and gaining nothing.
If that were true we're still be speaking Sumerian.
Maybe she got pregnant while alone in space. That would make a good TV show premise:
The show could star Halle Barry and Goran Visnjic, set in the not-too-distant future and ...
... Nobody would buy it. Crappy idea.
Nevermind
Shut it, Humpty. You don't get to redefine words as you please to excuse your own dimwittedness.
I feel embiggened.
Give up. Language evolves.
Yes it does, and asifyoucare is contributing to that evolution.
but we're far and away net positive.
If that were even remotely true, usage of modern collaqialsmisms would be proportional to intelligence (hint: any fool can see that it isn't...).
collaqialsmisms
Colloquialisms?!
hey, that ISS is a *very expensive tin can*, that can hold a crew and a lot of laptops
Gee, I wonder who the culturally-insecure douche was who'd mod down what was arguably one of the funniest things I've come up with on here...? :)
The old slashdot post about Ko San was correct at the time - Ko San was chosen over Yi So-Yeon to be the first South Korean astronaut and was still going at the time the first article on slashdot was posted. However, Ko San was accused of violating their security protocols and revealing secret information twice while training at the cosmonaut training center. This caused him to lose his spot on the Soyuz and Yi So-Yeon went up instead. Ko San left the astronaut program years ago, leaving Yi So-Yeon as the sole remaining trained astronaut.
Ko San Bio, he is an interesting dude.
I could care less ;)
Being against this particular transaction is not the same as being against the evolution of language. As far as I can tell, the new meaning of the phrase "begs the question" is the same as "raises the question," except with the additional nuance that the speaker/writer wants to sound like a person who is well read enough to have encountered the phrase in its original usage but, in fact, is not and has not. Being against that does not make one a grammar nazi or language Luddite.
This reminds me of a video I just seen.... word crimes...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Meanwhile, many other words and phrases over the centuries have lost the original meaning while "gaining nothing" and yet we're all still here!
Yes, by some miracle we are here... But how many disasters have those language changes caused along the way?
- As you are my main commander, I consult you: should we ignite a World War in the current situation?
- I could care less about that idea!
- Aha, so you care a fair amount. Well, roll out the troops!
No, collaqialsmisms. Do you failed reading or somesuch?
No, collaqialsmisms. Do you failed reading or somesuch?
no you have failed
For all intensive purposes...
Sth Koreas space program shut down because the Seoul astronaut resigned
And when people say they are hungry enough to eat a horse, they actually would not eat a horse.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Prescriptivists always lose. Use defines the language. :-(
Sad to say.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Let's assume that English evolves to the point that "begs the question" doesn't automatically label you as logic-deficient. English has evolved, and now it can also mean, "raises the question." Great.
It is still a cliche, not a creative use of English, and labels the user as a person who can't express themselves very well. There's no way around it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The one astronaut was also the leader of the space program.
so what? I mean, if the program consisted of anything else than just begging a ride for one person to ISS from Russia/USA/EU then the leader calling it quits would have not had any affect at all.
but if the program consisted just of training her and her using 25 million dollars for a ticket to the ISS then sure, if she calls it quits then the program is at end - and she already went to the ISS so the program was a smashing success.
doing a rocket of their own would need a fair bit more of cash and an actual space program.
Now, the entire South Korean space program it seems consisted of just paying Russia 20 mil to deliver a bio engineer into ISS and back - and she's been in business school for the past 4 years it seems. ...but, why would you even call that a space program? just to piss on north korea?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I can't help but picture NASA calling a press conference just to say "We're looking pretty good now, aren't we?".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Not really sad at all. Thats how languages grow. And without language evolution we'd all be grunting and hitting each other with rocks and shit.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
The only inevitability is that the term "begs the question" is now and will remain ambiguous.
The point of language is to communicate, and ambiguity is typically noise in the channel. I will leave deliberately injecting ambiguity into communication to the diplomats and artists—I don't refer to the fallacy using the poorly chosen original term anymore, especially when plainer terms communicate the concept more clearly and efficiently.
Sometimes the loss of an awkward construction is a gain for language.
"Begging the question" was never a very good choice of terminology -- a half-baked translation from the Latin petitio principii. You might as well use the Latin because you have to know what the term means to have an chance of decoding its meaning; the words give no clue. "Asking ill-founded questions" or "asking premature questions" would have been better.
"Begging the question" has *always* misled most readers and hearers, and we're better off with the new meaning, which *everybody* understands (although many dislike).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The only inevitability is that the term "begs the question" is now and will remain ambiguous.
Everything is ambiguous if you're ignorant. Why does that matter? Should I stop using words with more than three syllables just because someone might misunderstand them?
The phrase "begs the question" is never ambiguous to an educated individual who actually looks at the context in which it's employed. It's only ambiguous to those who either don't understand it's original meaning, or don't bother paying attention to the discussion.
She's 36, married, no children.
Guess that's what "personal reasons" are. The biological clock is ticking.
Its not growth, its an arms race.
A $25 Million program depends on a single person not getting in an accident, not having physical (36 is not so young in that aspect) or psycological problems, or (in this case) not getting pregnant and keeping prepared and waiting for a decade between the spaceflights. And then the question is if this person was the right person?
Having a big project depending on a single person is absolutely stupid.
The only inevitability is that the term "begs the question" is now and will remain ambiguous.
The phrase should be abandoned, IMO. Use "raises the question" for the one, and "assumes the conclusion" for the other, or "beggars the question" if your audience has half a clue.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Prescriptivists always lose. Use defines the language.
Chillax broheim. Ain't no thing.
If you seek credibility when you write, as you might when you argue for a position, it's better to write in the manner of an educated adult. Much of what's admirable in humanity comes from our willingness to fight when it's likely that we'll lose.
Jus sayin.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Whoosh.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
When a speaker knows the listener does not understand them, yet still chooses to use the ambiguous words causing the problem, then the speaker is not trying to communicate, they're just trying to make themselves look clever in the least clever way I can think of. Why would you actively and deliberately choose to use language that has been proven time and time again to be misunderstood. It's the worst kind of dumb and usually indicative of the presence of a cockwomble.
I agree entirely.
People who write "would of" instead of "would have" should be shot, though.
If you actually begged a question in the way its defined and you pointed it out chances are a very small subset of the population will now actually have a clue what you're talking about. Like it or not the common use of "begs the question" has changed and fighting it makes you look like a pedant.
I find it hard to get worked up about this stuff when there are people out their who say things like "I could care less", when they mean they don't care at all.
See what I did they're?
How are we supposed to fix the more complicated phrases of English when we're losing touch of even the most basic grammar. You know it's bad when Weird Al has written a song about it.
I could care less if people write "would of".
The only inevitability is that the term "begs the question" is now and will remain ambiguous.
The phrase should be abandoned, IMO. Use "raises the question" for the one, and "assumes the conclusion" for the other, or "beggars the question" if your audience has half a clue.
Or "buggars the question" if it is a politician.
They want a space programme because Japan and China have them, and particularly because they want to be seen as equal to the Japanese in technology. Brands like Samsung and LG are still seen as cheaper or slightly lower quality than Panasonic, Sharp, Hitachi and the like. Korean cars like Hyundai and Kia are seen as cheaper versions of Toyota and Honda models. South Korea wants to shake this image off, and sees having a space programme as a way to do it.
The thing is, Japan's space exploration goes back to the 60s, and China actually has a fairly long history and vast amounts of money to throw at it too. Even places like India, which SK sees as a potential competitor in the future, is surpassing them easily. Their hope is to start a commercial space industry, but it needs kick-starting by the government.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I actually do care less.
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
Why not?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It couldn't be the people she works with? It sounds like, her problem.
"Begging the question" has *always* misled most readers and hearers,
No, no it has not. People who want to appear smarter than they really are have misread readers and hearers. They also like to point out that language evolves when caught full of shit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It is still a cliche, not a creative use of English,
You mean like when you wrote that it was a cliche, a phrase which itself is so overused as to in fact be one? Hypocrisy is the greatest luxury.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If that were true we're still be speaking Sumerian.
That's a dumb thing to say even if going for a joke, because the premise included "gaining nothing" and clearly, we have at least gained new opportunities to mock people.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
People have debated whether language knowledge should be considered descriptive or prescriptive for centuries. I doubt you two chuckleheads are going to resolve this debate today. Nor do I think Slashdot is the ideal place to resolve this issue. But that's me.
That is all.
Literally!
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Dost thou propose that thine language shall never evolve and change in any manner unless it be so approveth by thee and thine ilk of the Nazis of Grammar? Shall thine language become static and fixed as the firmament and the heavens? Or hath the pinnacle of grammarian excellence been such obtained as to negate further change, owing to it's divine revelation and celestial perfection?
Would such change undo the works that man has wrought under heaven? Would thine countenance still continue as blessed and calm as days of yore? I beseech you, good sir, to ponder the myriad ways in which ones speech no longer resembles that of our forefathers, even as thou pines for a return to the olden ways.
Methinks thine bloomers may have come become ill adjusted leading to your distemper. I prithee, settle thine dyspeptic mood and swallow your bile, lest ye strain thyself. These ill spirits do not become you, and place much strain upon your liver.
I do believe the gentleman doth protest too much over matters of trifling importance.
If you have ever said "let me google that", then you too are guilty of this. If you have ever used any expression which is newer than the dark ages, you're certainly guilty of this.
Language evolves, and the fact that a second entire expression which sounds similar to the first is not the fault of the expression or the people who use it.
Yes, there is the logical fallacy of "begging the question". But there is also the more modern "begs the question" implying "that causes us to ask this", and it has been in use for decades.
Whether the grammar nazis among us accept or not is a different issue.
So, yo dawg, chill and stop griefing, peeps be speaking differently than before. Deal with it.
At best English is a bastardization of a several languages, thrown together with a hodge podge of rules which require you to know which language gave us the word and why, and it is entirely possible to construct phrases which sound similar but which convey an entirely different meaning.
My advice to you, get over it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Know what else is a cliche? People whining about the relative meaning of a phrase which originated in the 16th century (and was apparently a bad translation from Latin), and a more modern phrase which uses some of the same words.
Unless you are specifically in a context where you're doing formal logic or debating, the former is rarely used. And, if you're in that context, everybody knows the difference between those two things. If you're not, people probably mean the more modern version of it.
So, dealeth with it, lest thee gets presumed for man of excessive pedantry and retentiveness of the sphincter.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Ironic, isn't it? ;-)
And, cliche isn't a phrase, it's a word.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Technically correct is the best kind of correct!
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Probably, but then I wouldn't get quite as much joy as I do from funetic aksents.
Dem mek boyz better git to workin on da red wunz. Dey go fasta. What waaaghlord Jubblybutt wantz, waaaghlord Jubblybutt gitz!
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
The phrase should be abandoned, IMO. Use "raises the question" for the one, and "assumes the conclusion" for the other
That's the conclusion I drew a few years ago. For years I had been correcting the modern usage of the phrase, but then one day I got irked at the ambiguity and decided to read about it. Finding out that "beg the question" was a mistranslation of the petitio principii term changed my outlook. I mean, not to mention that the modern usage is syntactically and semantically valid English. The campaign to preserve a mistranslated term in favor of valid, intuitive English seemed untenable to me.
Now, I eschew the use of the term altogether (in either sense). Depending on the audience I will refer to the fallacy using a self-explanatory version, or, if the audience is educated/receptive to learning, I like to promulgate the petitio principii term. It's trivial to circumlocute the modern form.
Except it's exactly what the phrase "begs the question" means.
Begs the question as you want it used isn't really an English phrase, just a group of words given a new meaning due to a historical mistranslation, while the way everyone else uses it is just the English language using actual definitions of words.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Ah yes, that is the moral of the Words that End in GRY fable.
Or maybe it allows the less intelligent to communicate more effectively, leading to richer discourse overall.
While the more intelligent do not require them to speak effectively.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Who was whining? I was merely pointing out the characteristics of people who use phrases in certain ways. Use it not, lest thou be taken for a fool.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You don't understand what a cliche is........frequent use is not enough, otherwise it would be difficult to say "I'm hungry."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I really don't think people think "Oh man, how do I appear smarter here, yes, yes, I will use BEGS the question, only the intellectual elite use this phrase, and I shall be one of them!!"
I think the phrase just makes no sense, I still can't understand how I'm actually supposed to use it. If I just looked at the words in the phrase, I would read it as something begging for a question, raising the need to ask a question. I didn't even know that phrase is somehow related to academia in anyway.
But I guess I know now that the word seems to activate elitism, a moment to declare superiority, which begs the question of why it is so prevalent for people who know the proper use of the phrase to assume its misuse is just an attempt for the person to be as educated as they are, and not a common misunderstanding.
How do we tag misuses of the expression "begging the question" in the article summary? I tagged this story as "notbeggingthequestion," but if there's another tag out there people are using, I'd like to be aware of it.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I was just trying to crack a joke, but I guess it didn't work out too well.
If that is a cliche, then a typical Slashdot 'cliche' is to continue arguing when you know you are wrong, like you are about to do when you reply to this post.
But that's more of an obsession than a cliche.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I could care less, but instead I choose to wouldn't to.
I wouldn't to less give care to this particular topic of subjective words in would make choices, but it turns out that i didn't would.
Why sumerian? At what point did language evolve? Surely there was some degree of diaspora at that point.
If you had said, "central african" or "Bantu" or something I would understand that you were making a joke about it and selected your choice of language based on an extremely long term scale of human history. If you said "Indian" or "Hindi" or "Sanskrit" or "Proto-Indo-European" I would understand your choice of language based on the progression of linguistics within recorded history (Which might be the earliest correct scale although probably not).
But Sumerian does strike as a rather odd choice with basis in mythology only rather than history.
It's not evolution it's erosion, we are losing the original meaning and gaining nothing.
We still have the original meaning, but it is has pretty much been limited to college logic classes for most of the last century. Giving pedants and excuse to bitch on the internet has probably boosted the original meanings usage an order of magnitude. If anything, the new meaning has probably saved the old meaning from obscurity and erosion.
Her resignation does not beg questions; it prompts or raises them.
To beg the question is to assume a particular answer in the reasoning used to arrive at that answer.
It perhaps raises the question if she was the right person to lead the program...
But it might beg the question that the huge cost of sending her into space was a waste of taxpayer's money (assuming that was the goal of spending the money)...
I wasn't aware that South Korea was involved in the Iraq debacle (either round). So their space programme might actually be bigger than their Iraq losses.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
To go against the wishes of your management in Korean culture is one tough thing to do. That lady has got (metaphorical) balls. More so than the large majority of the Koreans I've worked with (in Korea).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Using "then" in place of "than" seems to be most frequent misuse I see here and abroad (on the web). Then refers to sequence or timing, than infers comparison but I see an expression of "this is better then that" in almost every thread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's not evolution. It's the writer looking stupid.
Yes, moderator. We get it, you're fat, and you'd rather mod people down than do something about it, because you're also pathetic. Go choke on a french fry.
--fat guy
P.S. Slashdot: this comment will not improve with age. Let me post the fucking thing already, you twats.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nothing is getting resolved here. It's a religious debate.
The important part is that both views are offered publicly so that a neutral 3rd party can make up their mind. Kind of like ensuring that people don't spend every waking moment tuned into just Fox News for their view of the world.