Astronaut Stories

[JB47394]

This has to be read to be believed. As someone observed in the comments, if we're going to have a lot of people in space, there are going to have be some measures taken to protect the passengers from each other.

What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he’s not coming back?

"If you guys don't give me a chance to repair my instrument, I'm not going back."

arstechnica.com

 

[Grendal]

Humanity will be forced to improve themselves in space. Mistakes will punished severely. Disfunction will be deadly to everyone around the person with a personal crisis. This is the homesteaders trying to cross the wild west in wagons but even more dangerous.

 

[scaesare]

I saw that yesterday and thought that could make an interesting movie... maybe a docu-drama...

 

[JB47394]

Humanity will be forced to improve themselves in space.

Or humanity will turn to dystopian controls to ensure that the malicious, irresponsible, or inept never get the chance to mess up. Heck, the solution to the door problem was to centralize control. Commanders had the option to lock the door, and they did so as soon as they had any doubt about a mission specialist. It may simply be too dangerous to allow a random human being to have much control at all in such a dangerous environment.

There are all sorts of potential outcomes that aren't very rosy. Consider that you want people around you that you know and can trust. You know they won't do anything to get you killed. That can easily lead to tribalism, that us/them mindset that harms societies.

In my opinion, the best way to get an improved version of humanity into space is to very carefully filter them, just as we did for the original crops of Astronauts. Make sure that you've got healthy people who can contribute to the mission at hand. That means mentally healthy as well as physically healthy. The trick here is that we have a rather funky concept of what is psychologically healthy. Do you want someone who voted a certain way there with you? How about a believer/denier of climate change? Or someone who believes/refutes astrology? Believes/refutes the existence of God? And so on.

I'm pretty sure that China will be carefully filtering their taikonauts to match the Chinese national ideals. We may discover which ideals actually work well when we have a series of countries or unions launching their version of ideal people en masse. National boundaries may never be as strongly drawn as when we are in space.

 

[TunaBug]

I love Dan Rather's pun when he introduced the news segment: "Scott Pelley has the exclusive on nuts and bolts in space."

The article also mentioned that a later incident involved a mission specialist who had flown multiple times having a bad reaction to some meds. So there's a concrete example that it's not just about people you think you know and can trust.

And I learned that mission specialist and payload specialist are not the same thing. Mission specialist is a professional NASA astronaut. Payload special is not a professional astronaut...think Howard Wolowit.

 

[JB47394]

The article also mentioned that a later incident involved a mission specialist who had flown multiple times having a bad reaction to some meds. So there's a concrete example that it's not just about people you think you know and can trust.

Good point. Here's a YouTube video from Outland that horrifically demonstrates the very point. I'm not showing the thumbnail because it's pretty gross.

 

[TunaBug]

Humanity will be forced to improve themselves in space. Mistakes will punished severely. Disfunction will be deadly to everyone around the person with a personal crisis. This is the homesteaders trying to cross the wild west in wagons but even more dangerous.

With the homesteaders once they got to their plot of land they were isolated: go nuts and they injure themselves or their family, not take out the whole community.

ETA: The old/wild west analogy is probably good though in that there will probably be a need for swift harsh justice. Hopefully it remains fair, although I am skeptical that 21st-century ideas about fairness will be satisfied.

 

[ecarfan]

I'm pretty sure that China will be carefully filtering their taikonauts to match the Chinese national ideals.

As the US did in the 60’s with its astronauts. And likely still does.

 

[Nikxice]

As an avid collector, I try to keep up with threads on collectSPACE. Over the years the lock issue has been discussed several times. I don't know the sources Eric used for his article, but collectSPACE members can always add detail to historical Space topics. An original Flight Data File (FDF or crew checklist) below has been available to review there since 2010.

While some commanders might have used a lock much earlier, there is strong evidence to suggest installing the hatch padlock became a routine procedure the same year as the STS-51B incident. That mission launched in April of 1985. In late November 1985 STS-61B flew. The deorbit Flight Data File indicates that prior to reentry, the Mission Specialist 2 (MS2) was responsible for removing the padlock. On STS-61B this would have been Mary Cleave, who unfortunately just recently passed. It's still not clear if the padlock procedure continued thru to the end of the Shuttle program in 2011.

I believe it was a good idea to include the padlock per the FDF. This would serve to alleviate concerns, reducing anxiety, stigma or possible suspicions that might be attributed to another crewmember. Especially lesser known payload specialists.

Would be interesting to hear Elon talk about padlocks and whether SpaceX will continue to offer them only as an optional mission item.