NASA Selects 8 New Astronaut Trainees, Including 4 Women 136
illiteratehack writes "NASA has selected a 39-year-old chief technology officer to become a trainee astronaut. Josh Cassada is the current chief technology officer and co-founder of Quantum Opus, a firm that specialises in photonics. Cassada is one of eight individuals selected by NASA from 6,100 applicants for astronaut training, though what their future mission may be has yet to be revealed."
Of the astronaut trainees selected, four of them are women — a new record.
To Mars! (Score:5, Funny)
I think I've seen this Archer episode.
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I was actually thinking that with her hair color/style and uniform that Anne McClain had a vague resemblance to Amanda Tapping's character from SG1...
Why so many military folks? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would think it would be easier to train PhDs to be astronauts than Military folks to be PhDs.
I get it that NASA started out testing planes, but there is nothing for the astronaut to fly anymore. Even the shuttle should have been automated.
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but there is nothing for the astronaut to fly anymore
Oh sure there is. Just not at this point in time. Unless you have an FTL radio to control complex deep space missions remotely.
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Humans are not going into deep space. Even then a computer will still be a much better pilot. Moving the few light seconds up into orbit is not going to help that problem much.
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We are closer to getting humans into deep space than we are to make machines make autonomous decisions for unplanned events.
What we have now is remote controlled cars.
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Citation please.
Voyager seems to be doing fine without humans.
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Voyager 1 & 2 do receive commands from NASA.
And they haven't had any unplanned events to deal with on their own.
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1. voyager does not support human life. we're still experimenting with long term life support technology, but it's not ready for a real mission.
2. voyager has no propulsion system required to reliably reach other systems. we are probably centuries away from this, if it ever happens.
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1. Stupid idea. Adds unneeded cost just for PR and space nutters.
2. seems to be working fine in deep space
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1. I agree. For now anyway.
2. not if you actually want the craft to arrive at specific destinations reliably. Ballistics+thrusters work ok for in-system exploration but getting an unpowered craft to another star system is nearly impossible.
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What start system is close enough for that?
Even if we could go some significant percentage of C it seems pretty unlikely to be worthwhile.
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you just said "seems to be working fine in deep space".
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And?
Voyager is working fine in deep space. Even that is not very close to another star system.
Go look at the distances we are talking about.
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It isn't like we actually seem to have a valid space program anymore.
NASA has been decimated so badly in recent years, I'm thinking "new" astronauts are more for looks than any real substance.
What the hell are we gonna send them out on?
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It's because Obama put the nigger Charles Bolden in charge of NASA.
Nigger-bashing is so passe. Let's start bashing faggot. I bet there's more than one faggot in the administration we can pin the blame on.
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They are just as screwed as they are now.
Humans cause most of those things that go wrong. Look at flight crash statistics for proof of that. Better yet take the humans out of the space craft all together.
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humans on the ground (sloppy maintenence crew), not the human in control.
big difference.
humans in control have much larger history of saving the day or mitigating/reducing the tragedy than they do of causing the tragedy.
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BS, look at flight crashes. Hell look at that t-38 crash in your link.
Humans period make tons of mistakes. Their are entire categories they are so common, like "controlled flight into terrain."
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Apparently you haven't read any flight crash findings. Most are pilot error.
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Are the pilots making errors in situations that the autopilot would have handled fine or are they making errors because they are in a dificult situation that the autopilot was unable to handle forcing them to take over?
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humans in control have much larger history of saving the day or mitigating/reducing the tragedy than they do of causing the tragedy
Which results only in them saving their own asses. It's pretty silly to send someone someplace were the justification is so that they can save themselves. Why not save a bunch of money and leave them on the ground? Almost all useful scientific and practical work has been done by unmanned missions, for a small fraction of the price. If some of those unmanned missions crash and burn for lack of the heroic human touch, it's just part of the price of doing business, and still a lot cheaper than manned missions.
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"This sort of thing has cropped up before and it has always been due to human error." -- HAL9000
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I'm sorry I can't do that ebno.
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Re:Why so many military folks? (Score:5, Insightful)
I gather that they know what they are doing, but I imagine that "makes decisions well while under pressure" might be a pretty big criteria that might already be tested in a military pilot.
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Why?
What decisions will they be making?
What experiment to run next?
Everything is done with checklists, and it is not like there is any need for a pilot.
My bet is they select these folks for PR reasons or other political BS.
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I can't speculate on their "real" reasons for selection, but I think it doesn't take much research to find examples of things going very wrong in space [wikipedia.org]. I have been in situations with people where they reacted quite badly, so I don't think I'm going out on a limb here.
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Checkout how many of those are caused by human error.
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OK, but humans are by definition still in the manned spaceflight program.
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Well, it's kind of a separate discussion, but personally I support efforts to keep man in space.
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Military pilots are, from even before astronaut training, also more likely to understand the acceleration stress of a launch, and to be reasonably comfortable when the realization hits that they're strapped to a giant rocket whose goal is to explode fast enough to hurl them into orbit, but slow enough to not kill them.
Human brains aren't evolved for this kind of treatment, so it takes a good deal of psychological training to function appropriately under the conditions of spaceflight. In addition to the rapi
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Military pilots are ... reasonably comfortable when the realization hits that they're strapped to a giant rocket whose goal is to explode fast enough to hurl them into orbit, but slow enough to not kill them.
While the engineers who designed that not-quite-bomb sit a mile away behind several feet of reinforced concrete. The obvious inference is that pilots are not too bright.
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the Naval and Air Force Academies are some of the best engineering schools in the world. You have to be in the top 5% or higher in your high school class to even be considered to attend. and they have phd's as well
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Oh wow, top 5% of a highschool class. That seems like a pretty low mark unless it is a hell of a high school.
Then why does everyone talk about going to MIT and not the Air Force Academy?
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Probably the fact that when you graduate you aren't as likely to get shot at by hostile fire. If you do a cost benefit ratio between military and civilian, military doesn't look bad if you stay in long enough. But that getting shot at as part of the job description thing really does slow down the potential applicants. The fact that they are moving to more and more drone based missions doesn't help either.
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because its harder to get into the AFA.
seriously, you are a bloody tool and you're just as ignorant on this topic as you are on every other.
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because its harder to get into the AFA
But a much better place to harass women.
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Why?
There is no need for that. The shuttle should have been automated like buran. Dragon does not need a pilot.
Re:Why so many military folks? (Score:5, Informative)
the Buran flew once.
it did so and was developed over 10 years after the shuttle and was nothing more than a cheaper smaller copy of the shuttle.
it only flew automated because it was unmanned, as befits a test flight that they dont even know will work (believe it or not, even the russians didnt want to risk losing astronauts...they're kinda hard to replace)
it never flew again.
it never did anything again.
and "From the very beginning Buran was intended to be used in both fully automatic and manual mode", meaning it was ntended to have people, and people in control. if we had had the tech to test the shuttle unmanned initially (and recover it), we likely would have too before moving to manned missions.
and if youre going to have people along for the ride anyway (EVA, repair the Hubble, experiments, etc etc) it makes no sense for them to be at the mercy of a computer that might fail when you could just as easily add some extra training so they can fly the damn thing if need be and add yet another layer of safety to the system and increase the odds of everyone's survival.
meanwhile there are multiple instances where the has shuttle faced a problem inflight that either did require the pilot to correct, or potentially would have, and the technology to have an automated system recover the aircraft did not exist at that time. moreover, several of these incidents would have called into question the ability of such a system to make the right corrections. spaceflight and launch and recovery is a very dynamic scenario encompassing multiple modes of flight. the pilot IS the computer you seek capable of taking all the data being fed him by the hundreds of men in mission control and performing the correct actions, and he's easier to train and produce than such a multi-modal control computer.
1985 July 29: STS-51-F: Space Shuttle in-flight engine failure. They almost aborted launch and detached the shuttle frm the boosters engines before reaching altitude in order to fly cross atlantic to a recovery field. No computer at the time could have handled such a maneuver. Even today it owuld be hard pressed thing to do...its rather hard to test and develop such a system because you dont exactly go around destroying shuttles to perfect a system. (they ended up aborting to orbit rather than aborting to xatlantic)
1999 July 23: STS-93: main engine electrical short and hydrogen leak: Five seconds after liftoff, an electrical short knocked out controllers for two shuttle main engines. The engines automatically switched to their backup controllers. Had a further short shut down two engines, Columbia would have ditched in the ocean, although the crew could have possibly bailed out. Concurrently a pin came loose inside one engine and ruptured a cooling line, allowing a hydrogen fuel leak. This caused premature fuel exhaustion, but the vehicle safely achieved a slightly lower orbit. Had the failure propagated further, a risky transatlantic or RTLS abort would have been required.
1981 Apr 12: Columbia STS-1 - the perfect example of why your computer still needs a pilot. the computer demands predictable flight characteristics. but if you pay attention, in the very first shuttle flight a flight control was knocked out of alignment. A computer cannot handle such a thing. A computer cannot "feel its way" through the modifed flight envelope.
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Did you fly your own jet to work today?
No, but when I got there I sat in front of a computer. That's how space exploration should be done.
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Space exploration is an intellectual curiosity. Space colonization and exploitation is, in the medium to long term, the only thing that matters.
Re:Why so many military folks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most military pilots already have a fair amount of schooling in science and engineering, as part of becoming pilots.
Add to that the fact that military pilots, during their entire training, are taught to operate under heavy physical and mental stress, while following instructions from remote Controllers, and also to handle their plane according to check-lists and routines, as well as crisis management, and teamwork. Then there's also the routine psychological check-ups in many armed forces, which means you have fewer people with mental disorders that can disrupt team cohesion/efficiency(ADHD, Asperger etc etc). There's also the fact that the military people also are used to strict daily physical excercise.
On the other hand, many PHD's don't do much in the way of physical excercise at all, and for those who do, most only gym or similar light excercise a couple of times per week, they have no training in working under a combination of psychological AND physical pressure, no crisis management, little in the way of deep, life-dependant teamwork etc. Many have a deep-seated resentment against "jocks", mental disorders such as ADHD, Asperger etc are not exactly uncommon among PHD's etc, meaning the available candidate pool becomes very small.
There are exceptions of course.... But it's not weird that the military is a readily-available candidate pool.
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Thanks for the good answer.
I had not considered the team stuff at all.
I still think we should look to getting rid of astronauts, but at least that makes sense.
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"Riding Rockets" by Mike Mullane (Score:3)
Just a quick book recommendation that addresses (amongst other things) the PhD vs. military tensions during the early period of the space shuttle program:
http://www.amazon.com/Riding-Rockets-Outrageous-Shuttle-Astronaut/dp/0743276833 [amazon.com]
It also candidly covers some of the pressures of being in the astronaut corps, warts & all. It's also by turns inspiring, tragic, irreverent and very funny, and not at all like many of the officially endorsed astronaut autobiographies. The author became an astronaut via the
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NASA should just be honest and hire a bunch of PR people. That's 99% of what they're going to end up doing anyway. You don't need a Ph.D. in physics to sit around in LEO on a space station, doing podcasts for schoolkids.
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Ever see the movie "The Birdman of Alcatraz"? Getting a PhD is a lot like being the birdman, only without the jail cell or the guards. Like that prisoner, you do some basic research / experimentation while reading up on a topic, you publish, continue reading, eventually maybe find a good topic for a theses, do more research, more experimentation, and publish again. After a positive review, you might have a PhD. It's an individual effort. A PhD in and of itself is a stamp of approval that this person can per
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i have to agree... (Score:1)
partially at least...
More like changing the oil in your car in a straight jacket following instructions from a blind person...watch some old ISS footage of spacewalks and other EVA and you'll see the poor Astronaut have to, essentially, report every move they make and get a 'yes/no' from Ground Control....every...move...'remove wrench from toolkit' takes 3 confirmations from ground...
'risk management' to the destructive degree...it's psychotic...death by burea
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Dragon, I would guess.
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What space ship will they be flying in?
Soyuz ?Otherwise these guys will be dead by the time the next american capsule/spaceship is ready to go.
Shouldn't we be saying "cosmonauts"?
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What space ship will they be flying in?
I've heard that NASA was making a technology transfer deal with Edward Makuka Nkoloso.
they have kitchens in space? (Score:2, Funny)
i though they didn't need to cook their food up there
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What's going on? (Score:2)
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Six minutes late. Must have stopped to pee.
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not even as a joke, but... maybe nasa is looking towards more long term missions, the ones where sending 7 guys and one female wouldn't be the brightest idea ?
make it 50/50 and you have higher chances of them staying happy.
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four are Navy test pilots
Well, it takes a lot of flight training to sit strapped in a chair while the Russians drive.
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Cultural marxists must always push as though they've made no headway because it helps ramp up the sensationalism...and taxpayer funded privilege.
I don't mind having female astronauts. I have a problem with astronauts being chosen because they're female instead of having the best qualifications. That is sexist by definition, and is wrong if gender has no relevance here. I don't know whether these women were chosen in this way, but considering cultural trends these days, it's a possibility.
How much did he pay? (Score:1)
How much did that CTO pay for his spot? He was really that much better than 6,000 other people?
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How much did that CTO pay for his spot? He was really that much better than 6,000 other people?
Hopefully he paid a lot. In the 21st century astronauts are just characters to play Buck Rogers. Sell the seats to the highest bidders and use the money to do some useful space science instead.
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NASA is a government agency. This guarantees that any candidate selection process is loaded with politically correct assumptions and discriminators.
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The ridiculous programs the trainees go through in that show make for good television, but it isn't even remotely based in reality.
Post to undo mods (Score:1)
On a related note... (Score:4, Funny)
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Somewhere, somewhen (Score:1)
Somewhere in a parallel universe, a Slashdot article shows
...and four of the astronauts are men!
Sign with Space-X (Score:2)
Space-X is planning a manned flight in 2015. Space-X will have their own private astronauts. They'll probably be ex-NASA astronauts initially, test-pilot types. Once Space-X has flight crew, that will probably be the place to go.
NASA still has 49 active astronauts [nasa.gov], most of whom (but not all) have been in space. They don't have much to do. There are lot of recent astronaut layoffs and quits. NASA had over 80 astronauts at peak. That's not where you go if you want to go into space. It's surprising that t
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Actually, this is a good thing. Women in general weigh less than men, which, when it comes to payload calculations, is something you do care about; neurologically speaking, they are as capable as men. The only downsides are the traditional ones -> should an oddball scenario arise where having that much more extra upper body strength is somehow the difference between life and death (the space station is pushed out of orbit, and you need to realign the Space Shuttle engines feeds with a giant crowbar, or f
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Of course, but it makes perfect sense if you accept the pillars of political correctness as truth. viva la revolucion!!
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Fuck Political Correctness. If they're qualified, they're qualified but the Low Earth Orbit stuff, while risky, isn't as risky as going to the Moon or beyond. If Space is going to be a frontier for mankind then we have to be willing to take risks, invest in programs or industries that will get us there and go.
NASA is full of bloat and horsecrap. Shit, take $5 out of the NSA budget and put it into a one shot trip to Mars. There's already volunteers and I'm sure Musk and SpaceX can supply cargo ships once
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take $5 out of the NSA budget and put it into a one shot trip to Mars
If we can get to Mars for $5 I'm all for it.
If they don't make it, we'll send another crew.
Better yet, send pre-killed astronauts. It'll save a fortune on life support and radiation shielding. Probably about as useful as the live ones too.
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LOL, that should have been $5B... and don't be such a pessimist. When explorers went around the world in ships, there was disease, mutiny and other perils that they had to face. Some of the most successful explorers weren't seen sometimes for years during their journeys. Nowadays people want assurances that everything is safe, sanitized and is suitable for audiences of all ages. Screw that mentality because it's the mentality that government sponsorship buys you along with all of the other shit. Hell e
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Agreed.
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Eight and a half months to and from Mars on a minimum energy ellipse, plus a number of additional months to line up the return launch window, and I betcha those male astronauts would be glad for the "tokenism" as you put it. Just sayin'...
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They might, but it's not the end of the world. See, there are men out there who care more about achieving something greater than just getting laid a maximum number of times.
When you say 'just saying', it suggests you don't really believe the legitimacy of your own statement.
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these women will be waaaaay past menopause by the time they get to space.
They should have selected toddlers and trained them along the way.