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Record-Setting Astronaut Retires from NASA (space.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the down-to-earth dept.

Record-setting NASA astronaut Scott Kelly retired from NASA on Friday, after spending more than 520 days in outer space, spread across four space missions -- two space shuttle flights and two recent missions on the orbiting International Space Station. The 52-year-old astronaut's last visit to the space station lasted more than a year, "a profound challenge for all involved," Kelly says, "and it gave me a unique perspective and a lot of time to reflect on what my next step should be on our continued journey to help further our capabilities in space and on Earth." Kelly's time in space started with a 1999 mission on the space shuttle to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and he's since spent more time in space than any other American. According to Space.com, NASA and Kelly have both said that his long-duration visits are the first baby steps towards a manned missions to Mars.

16 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. 340 days is not more than a year by weedjams · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.nasa.gov/content/on...

    1. Re:340 days is not more than a year by Sooner+Boomer · · Score: 1

      Exactly. I was going to post on this, you just beat me to it. No wonder Mars missions fail. Jeez, I'd hate to have these guys do my taxes or something really important!

      --
      Chaos maximizes locally around me.
    2. Re:340 days is not more than a year by elrous0 · · Score: 1

      I just hope their PR people aren't helping design the crewed spacecraft they're never going to build again.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    3. Re:340 days is not more than a year by cyn1c77 · · Score: 1

      http://www.nasa.gov/content/on...

      Why do you think they were talking about earth years? :)

    4. Re:340 days is not more than a year by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

      It's bad enough that NASA keeps calling it one year in space (see second article in the summary).

  2. Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    437 in one go
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    879 in total

    Nice try America

    1. Re:Meh by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      Not only that, but Kelly's last two space flights were only possible because Russia took him to the ISS. The US has no more ability to launch humans into space, so if it wants astronauts, it must beg Russia and/or China for a ride.

      Nonsense. There is no need to beg taxi drivers.

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
    2. Re:Meh by martinfb · · Score: 1

      I don't get this response. The article does say Kelly holds American records, not mankind's.

      --


      Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
  3. There are bigger problems than that here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The lack of Unicode support is a good thing. Look at other sites that support Unicode. All it means is spam in Chinese and Russian, plus a bunch of stupid Japanese-style kaomoji and emoji. Slashdot doesn't need stupidity like that. Anything worth expressing here can be done using the ISO-8859-1 characters.

    There are much bigger problems to deal with first. One is how Slashdot still makes causes HTTP requests to be made to "Taboola" and "ScoreCoard Research" and "Janrain" and "ntv.io". I don't know what any of them are, but they sure as fuck sound like attempts to track us! Over a month ago whipslash said something about cleaning up those trackers, but they still seem to be present! It shouldn't be that hard to remove them!

    Another huge problem is the bad moderation. It's routine to see perfectly good comments modded down for no good reason. This happens so often that it's necessary to browse Slashdot at -1 just to see all of the good comments that were wrongly modded down! That, of course, means that the whole moderation system becomes useless. The metamod system clearly isn't helping, because this problem continues to happen, and may even be getting worse.

    The posting limits are out of hand, too. At at time when Slashdot's community is dwindling in number and discussion is needed more than ever before, the stupid posting limits actually prevent anything resembling meaningful discussion! If you do attempt to engage in meaningful discussion, which necessarily involves some back-and-forth commenting, you'll quickly hit the posting limits and be forced to wait. Once that happens one or both parties will lose interest and move on to something else, likely not involving Slashdot.

    Instead of adding more useless functionality like Unicode support, I'd like to see them start stripping away the crap. Get rid of the ad trackers. Get rid of the broken moderation system. Get rid of the even more broken metamoderation system. Get rid of the stupid posting limits.

  4. Re:49 weeks is not more than one year by OzPeter · · Score: 2

    While the article asserts "The 52-year-old astronaut's last visit to the space station lasted more than a year, " in fact, it was more than three weeks shy. The NASA International Space Station Mission Summary at https://www.nasa.gov/content/o... shows launch on 27 March 2015 and landing on 1 March 2016, 340 days.

    WhenI saw that headline my first thought was that the "editor" deliberately said "lasted more than a year" in order to intentionally rile up the locals and generate more interest in the story. IE Making it more "click bait-y" without looking like you are making it "click bait-y".

    --
    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
  5. Thank you for your service, Astronaut!! by rmdingler · · Score: 1
    Kelly's not the longest serving human aboard the Space Station, but the fact that he has an identical twin in the space program could provide valuable insight on physiological changes that occur during extended stays off the blue planet.

    He is respectful of the Russians he has trained and served with, and the lesson of the dissolution of tribal prejudices could be more important than any scientific discovery made during his time in space.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:Thank you for your service, Astronaut!! by elrous0 · · Score: 1

      He is respectful of the Russians he has trained and served with, and the lesson of the dissolution of tribal prejudices could be more important than any scientific discovery made during his time in space.

      That's commie-talk, son!

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  6. Re:Who cares? by sysrammer · · Score: 1

    ...I heard a dog took a crap in Houston the other day. Why isn't that on slashdot?

    If the dog had crapped in outer space for almost more than a year, it would have been.

    --
    His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  7. Re:He lost his flight status by sysrammer · · Score: 1

    Good astronauts never die, they just go DNIF.

    --
    His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  8. Re:He did not set jack shit by sysrammer · · Score: 1

    ...He the hell did this guy break any records himself? It could have just as well been a monkey up there.

    Just like the moon landings. Been there, done that.

    --
    His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  9. A joke? by antdude · · Score: 1

    April 1, 2016 07:20pm ET. :/

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).