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.

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Not her fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they should have, I don't know, trained a few other people as well?

What's wrong with someone resigning after 6 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

"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?

Management 101

[Kittenman]

Always have a back-up.

Re:Management 101

[Darinbob]

There were tens of thousands of applicants for the position of sole astronaut. I think they should check back with the runner ups and see if they need a job.

And it's not like she was an active astronaut going to space all the time. She went once, then the rest of the time was mostly PR appearances.

To shut down even one department over this seems to indicate that someone was looking to shut it down anyway and was waiting for an excuse.

Re:begs FFS

[GonzoPhysicist]

It's not evolution it's erosion, we are losing the original meaning and gaining nothing.

Re:"matter of national pride "

[TapeCutter]

Thanks, I was wondering how their "space program" managed to get someone into space for the ridiculously low price of $25M. Makes sense now, a "tourist" seat on a Russian Soyuz to the IIS costs around $20M.

Re:begs FFS

[stoploss]

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.

Re:She quit because...

[Strider-]

She was afraid of heights!

I've actually sat around and gotten drunk with a couple of astronauts, both of whom have spacewalked. Apparently you don't get vertigo looking down towards the earth, it's when you look into the void. (Note that the helmets are designed so that as long as you're looking ahead, it's not within your field of view.

Both were correct at the time of posting.

[millisa]

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.

Re:begs FFS

[njnnja]

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.

Re:begs FFS

[DoomSprinkles]

For all intensive purposes...

Sounds like a joke

[rossdee]

Sth Koreas space program shut down because the Seoul astronaut resigned

Re:begs FFS

[hey!]

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).