NASA Wants "People People" for Astronaut Core 86
Hugh Pickens writes "Astronauts are the ultimate Type A personalities but that can backfire during a long stay in space so NASA is taking applications for a new crop of astronauts whose main duties are to conduct experiments, keep the station running and stay in their crewmates' good graces. For that, NASA needs an affable, tolerant guy or gal who is more researcher than jet jockey. 'You need to be more of a people person' to serve on the station, says astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who has flown on the space shuttle and commanded the station. 'You can't just be steely-eyed, no matter how competent.' Coping skills are crucial on a station mission, which lasts three to six months, compared with 11 to 15 days for a shuttle mission. 'Anybody can get along with anybody for a couple of weeks,' says psychiatry professor Nick Kanas who studies astronaut behavior. After a month or two, 'being with somebody for that long starts to wear on you. The jokes get stale. You have to learn new ways of interacting.'"
Stop trying to humanize NASA. (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember the space slut incident [wikipedia.org]? I rest my case. (Yeah, I know, she was military - but she was "people person", so my point stands.
Re:Prostitutes (Score:5, Interesting)
But I wonder what NASA is planning to do on longer spaceflights, say 2 to 5 years orso.
If we ever get to the point of far distance human exploring, human interaction including the sexual kind is something that needs to be carefully thought of. I assume they'd want a mixed group of males and females to keep some kind of balance.
It would be inevitable that at least some of them would get a desire for sex during such a long stay. Even if it's just to get some stress relief. One could argue that you should let nature take it's course just as we do in our every day life, but the situation there would be kind of different.
For example, say if you'd have 5 man and 5 woman. And by chance NASA picked 5 stonecoldfreezing woman who'd have no problems with a few years of celibacy and a few of the guys have a bit above average of testosterone... I can imagine some disasterous situations.
Anyone have any idea how these kind of social interaction problems are being dealt with at NASA?
Oh, wonderful, NASA joins the anti-autism crusade (Score:2, Interesting)
From what I read of the article, this is about enforcing societal norms on employees. And that usually entails firing a lot of autistic people.
First it was the IT industry, and now apparently the space industry is getting in on the act. Tired of watching otherwise competent and productive employees fail to give out and respond to conforming body language, managers decide that we need to bring in some people who make eye contact when they speak and understand the latest fashions. That is far more important than technical expertise, after all.
Most of you probably think its fine, but a societies treatment of 'freaks' and 'wierdos' is a good indication of how it will be treating 'normal' people further down the line.
Re:Prostitutes (Score:3, Interesting)
A couple of years ago I had an idea for a quasi-non-fiction book in the tradition of the Zombie Survival Guide. Not as creative or as fun. Okay, less creative but more fun. It would be Sex in Space: A Manual for Tourists, written as if it were a few decades in the future and honeymooners could vacation at a space hotel. Inside would be dos and don'ts, guides to which lubes would pose the fewest problems, instructions for how to use various gear in space to keep you and your partner together, etiquette for threesomes (common among dolphins/whales in the ocean who face problems with rebounding away), etc. I was sort of excited about the idea for the book for a while, and then discovered someone else had been as well. There was already a book Sex in Space.
Well, that dampened my enthusiasm. Laura Woodmansee's book has some strengths, but isn't as fun as mine would have been in my not so humble opinion. There's some overlap with ideas I had, and one part just has to be seen to be appreciated. She has a section about the "space kama sutra" that she illustrates with naked action figures "Buck" and "Barbarella" that includes one photo of a dolphin helping out in a threesome and another of one bondage rig. She also describes toys and apparatuses to strap people together using Velcro. Give her big creativity points for all that. She also has a short section on "sexy science fiction" where sex in space in science fiction is discussed.
So I'm not planning to write my version any more as a lot of items would be redundant, but as a science fiction writer who does write stories set in space and who teaches other writers about the space environment, I'm always interesting in learning more about sex in space. Purely research you see.
Woodmansee cannot absolutely confirm the claims that there has been sex in space, both on the part of Americans and Russians, that some others have made. If true, I'm sure it was for research, too. Dedication to science and knowledge, that sort of thing.
In the final days of Mir, there apparently was a porn movie planned to raise money. The plot involved sending up a woman to seduce a reluctant cosmonaut into leaving the station. It never got off the ground, unfortunately, which would have allowed some, ahem, hard data to be obtained about the particulars of sex in space.
What did get off the ground was the Uranus Experiment, as in "I'm not an astronaut but I will send a probe to a Uranus" as seen on t-shirts in my closet. Yeah, that "Uranus." In the late 1990s a porn movie (actually an entire trilogy) was shot using NASA's "vomit comet" which is a plane flying parabolic trajectories that allows several minutes of freefall at a time. The weightless scenes in the movie Apollo 13 were shot on the vomit comet, but no sex scenes. There was a different case for the Uranus Experiment. Or so I'm told. Google your own link to DVDs which can be found at sale prices (and should be deductible if you're a science fiction writer like myself, assuming I'm not too embarrassed to show my accountant the receipt). Woodmansee missed this movie in her book, unfortunately. Anyone seen it willing to admit it and weigh in on weightless sex? Or at least the acting?
And I can't decide if it would be better or worse than sex on Earth. More memorable maybe, but more problematic. And who wants to get hit by stray floaters of any sort?
I'm a stickler for getting the scientific details right in my novels, so I have no choice but to do the research. My readers demand it of me. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. With Velcro.