NASA Unveils 4 Astronauts Who Will Fly To the Moon on Artemis II Mission (cbsnews.com) 75
A Canadian astronaut and three NASA veterans, including one of the world's most experienced female spacewalkers, will fly around the moon next year in the first piloted voyage beyond Earth orbit since the Apollo program ended 50 years ago, the space agency announced Monday. From a report: NASA's Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover will join Canadian rookie Jeremy Hansen aboard an Orion crew capsule for the Artemis program's second fight, the first carrying a crew bound for the moon. The Artemis 2 mission is intended to pave the way toward the first moon landing -- Artemis 3 -- in the 2025-26 timeframe. Wiseman, Koch and Glover are all veterans of long-duration stays aboard the International Space Station while Hansen will be making his first space flight. Navy Capt. Wiseman, 47, a widowed father of two, is a veteran F/A-18F Super Hornet pilot who holds a master's in systems engineering. He launched aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2014 and spent 165 days aboard the space station, then served as chief astronaut after his return to Earth.
Koch, 44, holds a master's in electrical engineering who has experience in Antarctic research. She also launched aboard a Soyuz and spent nearly a full year aboard the lab in 2019-20, venturing outside for six spacewalks, including three all-female excursions. With 42 hours and 15 minutes of EVA time, she ranks third on the list of most experienced female spacewalkers. Glover, 46, is a Navy captain, a father of four and one of only a half dozen African Americans in NASA's astronaut corps. He launched to the station aboard the first operational SpaceX Crew Dragon mission in 2021-22, logging 168 days in orbit. Glover is a veteran test pilot with more than 3,000 hours of flight time and more than 400 carrier landings. Hansen, a 47-year-old colonel in the Canadian armed forces and father of three, is a veteran F-18 fighter pilot. He will be the ninth Canadian to fly in space and the first to venture beyond Earth orbit.
Koch, 44, holds a master's in electrical engineering who has experience in Antarctic research. She also launched aboard a Soyuz and spent nearly a full year aboard the lab in 2019-20, venturing outside for six spacewalks, including three all-female excursions. With 42 hours and 15 minutes of EVA time, she ranks third on the list of most experienced female spacewalkers. Glover, 46, is a Navy captain, a father of four and one of only a half dozen African Americans in NASA's astronaut corps. He launched to the station aboard the first operational SpaceX Crew Dragon mission in 2021-22, logging 168 days in orbit. Glover is a veteran test pilot with more than 3,000 hours of flight time and more than 400 carrier landings. Hansen, a 47-year-old colonel in the Canadian armed forces and father of three, is a veteran F-18 fighter pilot. He will be the ninth Canadian to fly in space and the first to venture beyond Earth orbit.
Exciting, but no way they keep to schedule. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Exciting, but no way they keep to schedule. (Score:4, Informative)
They didn't forget. They never knew. The much-maligned boomers who actually did know have all retired.
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Bite your tongue. I retired five years ago. :-p
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Boomers were in their late teens/early 20s when Apollo 11 happened. It was the lost and greatest generations that put us on the moon.
I was 22 at the time. My fellow Boomers protested against the whole idea of Apollo, My generation left science to the Chinese.
TOO OLD (Score:3)
I guess I get it, but.... (Score:3)
It just feels backwards to me, in the sense we did all of these moon missions, starting before I was even born. And here we are, spending all the money and effort to go back to simply orbiting the moon to "prepare for being able to land on it, in another mission".
I know .... It's a different spacecraft than the rockets used in the 60's and early 70's, etc. etc.
But quite an expensive re-inventing of the wheel here.
Re:I guess I get it, but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I guess I get it, but.... (Score:4, Informative)
Apollo took 5% of the Federal budget for a decade. Nowadays, NASA gets 0.3%, and Artemis is only part of that, at under 0.1% of the Federal budget.
Landing on the moon was seen as a national emergency, critical to keeping the US relevant as a world leader. Piles of money were shoveled into developing systems, procedures (the entire Gemini program was designed to develop procedures that would be needed for Apollo, like orbital rendezvous and spacewalking), infrastructure etc. Risks were taken that today would be unacceptable.
These days, Artemis is only possible because the Space Shuttle program ended, and finally a cheaper alternative was found for transporting astronauts to the ISS. This made some room in the budget.
Then the pork barrel machine swung into action and made sure SLS is an expensive new development based on legacy systems.
Could they have used Apollo systems instead? Theoretically, yes, for some aspects of Artemis.
The Saturn V is a 50 year old design and would require significant changes to replace obsolete hardware (from individual components to 50 year-old computer designs), obsolete production methods (engine nozzles hand-brazed from kilometers of small tubes), obsolete materials and obsolete design systems (from hand-drawn drawings to CAD/CAM). You end up with a rocket that's not cheaper than SLS.
The Apollo A7L space suit cannot be reused because those were developing problems after only 3 days on the lunar surface, and for Artemis we want to spend months.
That timeframe also makes it impossible to reuse the LM, for instance.
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Re:Oh, look, they put a vagina-owner in there. (Score:4, Informative)
Difference is she owns a pussy a you are a pussy.
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I think his point was that singling out her gender implies that it matters more than her being selected based on actual skill and merit. In a normal world that would be considered an insult. Her gender is not supposed to matter any more, remember?
Re: Oh, look, they put a vagina-owner in there. (Score:2)
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No, because huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrr! WOKE!
They call us "snowflakes" but get bent out of shape because they mention this woman's accomplishments. God I hate these clowns. I guess it's our fault for engaging with them.
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God I hate these hateful clowns.
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Have you considered there is a reason other than sexism that certain industries are male-dominated? Are female-dominated industries a result of sexism too?
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The thing is that in most male-dominated industries there *is* a lot of sexism, making awfully hard to address the question that you're posing in any sort of independent way.
It's also pretty hard to evaluate a counterfactual - male-dominated industries without sexism - without first going through the process of reducing sexism in various male-dominated industries.
There's also another dimension, which is that the exclusion of women often (though not always) tends to go hand-in-hand with "there's a right way
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You are countering my questioning of her selection by stating that I would not be a better choice and throwing in an insult.
In conclusion: You're an idiot. Leave discussion to people who can do it.
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Leave discussion to people who can do it.
Why don't you let me know when they get here, then? Until they show up I'm done with this pointless "conversation".
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No, it was not. It was that it was a condition of her selection that she have a vagina. Which is sexist.
"I'm pointing out that she's immensely qualified for the job,"
Yes, but to make a relevant point you have to show how she is immensely qualified for the job COMPARED TO OTHER CANDIDATES WITHOUT VAGINAS.
That you failed to do, and instead questioned my qualifications for the job.
Again, irrelevant.
And then you threw in a stupid insult,
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more info needed (Score:1, Flamebait)
Article fails to mention which ones are gay, trans, or black.
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You pig.
Re:more info needed (Score:5, Insightful)
I dont know about any of that but we just found the idiot one right here.
Must you twits bring culture war nonsense into every discussion? Most of us have long since become tired of it but clearly not you.
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I mean, anything that got us VP Kamala must be okay, right?
Re:more info needed (Score:4, Informative)
It's amazing the drama queens some members of our political right have become and of course drama queens always feel that their bullshit drama is super important and everyone needs to hear it!
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The only time I even hear the term woke anymore is when some right winger is complaining about anything in the world that they dont like.
Meanwhile, here we are in a discussion about our country's next moon landing (awesome) and we have you idiots blathering on about Kamala Harris and transgender people which have absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand (lame). But hey, your drama is super important so we should all have to hear it even when it's completely off topic, right?
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Right winger ? Nope, I am a centrist.
You woke are far left, deranged and hateful. Just because there are a lot of you, thanks to our universities, doesn't mean you are at the centre of normal, reasonable opinion.
NASA made a SEXIST choice.
Normal decent people are opposed to SEXISM.
And it is totally on-topic ( like that matters on Slashdot ) to point it out.
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Oh so now you're going to try to claim that you've been on topic this whole time when no one in this thread up until just now has even mentioned that they thought NASAs announcement was somehow sexist.
So tell me oh wise centrist drama queen, what exactly is so horrible about this NASA announcement?
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1. There are many hateful woke people just like you here, and only a few normal, decent people.
2. More than one discussion topic based on a story can be on-topic for that story.
3. NASA made a SEXIST choice.
Normal decent people are opposed to SEXISM.
And it is totally on-topic ( like that matters on Slashdot ) to point it out.
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Yes, your quote there is exactly what I was referring to when I said "up until just now" in my prior post. Are you just agreeing with me then?
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In my experience, everyone who claims to be a centrist is actually a rightist.
Also, see my signature.
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Yeah, if they're agro over dumb "woke" stuff like this guy is odds are the rest of their ideology is pretty far out there as well. I'm just playing along.
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Hahaha, yeah, I'm the one spewing nonsense. You cant even enunciate this horrible sexism you've decided to start talking about three posts in.
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Yes, of course.
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The only thing I'm not understanding is what you're even trying to accomplish here beyond off topic anti-"woke" trolling as all you've really done is name call me and bitched and moaned about how horrible "woke" is. You've even referred to me as one of your evil "woke" people when all I've done is tell you to knock it off with your off topic blathering about your stupid culture war. Then again, you probably use woke as a catchall term for anything you dont like just like most dumbshit culture warriors do no
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Hahahaha, alright, message received. Drama queen culture warrior it is. Thanks for confirming.
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Hate on, hater.
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Or is it some one who also thinks you're acting like a crazy person?
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Article fails to mention which ones are gay, trans, or black.
Exactly, what do they think it is still 1969 or something?
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ORBIT the moon? (Score:1)
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--Yah, BFD. Flying around the moon is no big deal, wake me up when they land on it and start building a permanent base.
summary curiosity (Score:4, Informative)
Why does the summary say this:
Glover, 46, is a Navy captain, a father of four and one of only a half dozen African Americans in NASA's astronaut corps
By saying "one of only a half dozen", the summary certainly gives the impression that the number of African Americans in NASA's astronaut core is inappropriate.
However, according to Wikipedia, there are 41 astronauts in the NASA astronaut core. This means, if the summary is correct and there are 6 African American astronauts, then 14.6% of the astronauts in the NASA astronaut core are African American.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Astronaut_Corps/ [wikipedia.org]
Since the percentage of African Americans in the US is 12.1 percent, this indicates that African Americans are overrepresented in the NASA astronaut core.
What, then, is the point of saying "only"?
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>"gives the impression that the number of African Americans in NASA's astronaut core is inappropriate." [...] "What, then, is the point of saying "only"?"
A better question is: What, exactly, is appropriate?
Welcome to the the identity politics game. The same as going on and on about the female candidate. NOBODY SHOULD CARE. The fact that people DO care is a problem. I am sure there will be some screaming that there isn't [apparently] an LGBTQIAKWICLZIXORUYV+ astronaut on board. It is so tiring and c
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I never implied any of the selected were not qualified. I don't think NASA would go that far. But when artificial quotas based on identity politics are in play, as they almost certainly are in this case, I guarantee not ALL those selected are the *best* candidates out of those who are qualified.
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Have to honestly say... (Score:2, Insightful)
...I wasn't pleased with the whole "ovaries in orbit" framing of this mission* but in 2023 I have to say I'm pleased it IS an actual woman on the crew because the president handing an International Women of Courage award to a dude sort of suggests some of us are not all terribly clear on y'know, what a woman IS anymore.
*I mean, it beats 'Muslim Outreach" as NASA's primary mission, anyway.
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If you're not a doctor then you aren't qualified to determine what a woman is!!!!
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So it IS a biological thing, then? Not just what they think in their heads?
Hint: personally, I think John Money - the guy who came up with this nonsense - was a sadistic, sociopathic pedophile and child abuser. I'm not sure I'd lean on his guidance for what we should think about gender.
Astronauts Unveiled? (Score:3)
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