I guess Peggy Whitson isn't sexy enough be on cover of magasines, so journalists need to find instagrammable faces.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2019/07/13/mee...
I like how her list of accomplishments starts with "witnessing 3 Space Shuttle launches.": https://nasablueberry.com/about/
Stunning.
"Always follow your dream and don’t let anyone take it from you.” — Alyssa Carson
This is too much ........
It’s unclear if it’s real or fake, but their “qualifications” seem to be number of social media followers, so it doesn’t seem actually real.
I’m not complaining, cool story and photos, but I’m sure it’s all performative so I follow it as one would a cool fiction podcast or something.
In followup, the advisory board member in question, evidently not such a stick-up-the-ass authoritarian as NASA’s decision makers, was dismayed by the revocation not the exuberance.
Yep, I did a quick Google too.
Full quote: "I learned she had lost her offer for an internship with NASA. This I had nothing to do with nor could I since I do not hire and fire at the agency or have any say on employment whatsoever. As it turned out, it was due to the NASA hashtag her friends used that called the agency's attention to it long after my comments were gone," Hickam wrote in a blog post Tuesday.
Hickam also shared that he is "certain she deserves a position in the aerospace industry and I'm doing all I can to secure her one that will be better than she lost," and has "talked to the folks that had to do with her internship and made absolutely certain that there will be no black mark on her record."
Would it be ok to ask you your thoughts about the space shuttle? Is that weird? I really apologize if so.
He agreed, and said he'd argued similarly.
Musk had an even better idea. Bring the ordinary booster rocket back without wings, rudder, or landing gear by using a bit of extra fuel at the last moment to kiss the landing pad rather than smash it. That empty tin balloon of a booster isn't going to fall that fast or need that much fuel to do it.
I don't like Elon, his methods, or his companies, but I am grateful for the progress his engineers have wrought!
Also have you seen the launches in person? Here we have some that look like glowing floating balls of plasma. When SpaceX was first doing tests everyone was outside thinking it was aliens or a bomb, it was that far outside anything people had ever seen before.
The thing that makes it such and achievement (that it's a select group of exceptional people) is also the thing that puts extra expectations on how you can act or what you can be involved in. It might be better if it were not that way, but the reality is that astronauts are not chosen based on skill and capability alone.
https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap10fj/as10-day1-pt2-earthorbit...
Thomas Stafford drops plenty of F-bombs in the Apollo–Soyuz mission transcripts too, which are faithfully recorded in the NASA archives for posterity.
During lunar orbit, they discovered a rogue poop floating in the cabin [1]:
> Stafford: Who did it? (Laughter)
> Cernan: Where did that come from?
> Stafford: Give me a napkin quick, there's a turd floating through the air.
> Young: I didn't do it. It ain't one of mine.
> Cernan: I don't think it's one of mine.
> Stafford: Mine was a little more sticky than that. Throw that away.
> Young: God almighty.
> Stafford: What do you see?
> Young: Nothing, that's enough for me.
> Cernan: Yes.
> Young: Nice going there.
> Cernan: No more turds are going to fit in there.
> Stafford: Is that waste compartment full?
> Young: No, hell; there's nothing in there.
> Cernan: It goes all the way down to the...
> Cernan: Hell, when I got in there, I had to stick my hand in there and [garble] - He put it in the bag, didn't he? You guys been trying to stick it through there with your fingers?
A few more choice quotes [2]:
> Stafford: [Garble] about that ascent stage. You know that? [Garble] son of a bitch [garble] screwed, you know? But that son of a bitch - John?
> Young: [Garble] burn [garble] God. What the hell is this shit? What? What is that crap those things [garble]? [Garble] putting my [garble].
> Young: Oh, what a life, being a spaceman. Wish I could have been a professor or something.
John Young was also the star of another great moment in NASA history, when he smuggled a corned beef sandwich onboard Gemini III [3]:
> Grissom: What is that?
> Young: Corn beef sandwich
> Grissom: Where did that come from?
> Young: I brought it with me. Let's see how it tastes. Smells, doesn't it?
> Grissom: Yes, it's breaking up. I'm going to stick it in my pocket.
> Young: Is it? It was a thought, anyway.
> Grissom: Yep
> Young: Not a very good one.
> Grissom: Pretty good, though, if it would just hold together.
[1] https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap10fj/as10-day6-pt28.html
[2] https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap10fj/as10-day6-pt27.html
[3] https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/hist... (page 45)
I bet you there was some PR person at NASA cussing them out when they heard/saw those too.
As for being faithfully archived, well we already have enough moon landing conspiracists without giving them more "evidence" of stuff being hidden during space missions.
She was selected for a student internship, not for training in the astronaut corps
I'm not saying it's justified, but I don't doubt they're overly cautious by nature and if they have a chance to remove a risk prior to any real investment, they're more likely to take that route.
The real mistake here is was made by a potential intern who was not yet hired. It’s like making a mistake on probation, you likely have very little recourse. It’s completely different for regular civilian employees
And having someone with the demeanor of Cardi B on the team would be bad for their PR mission how?
NASA is obviously acutely aware of how precarious their funding often is, so walks a fine line in an attempt to make the only critique against them purely budgetary and not political. Like it or not, showing too much personality allows one side or the other to start positioning you as a piece for or against their agenda (and of course the other side will take the opposite stance), making it a political issue even if it's ridiculous to think of it as so.
Yet they drew plenty of non-budgetary criticism for rescinding her internship, so it doesn't seem like that worked out for them.
Right now, there are no astronauts in training, although they are starting a new group in December from people who applied early this year. Not because they need more, but because they need younger ones.
If you want to go to Mars, you're probably better off going to Space-X.
Russia is sending a film director and actress to the ISS on October 5th.
What do you think the deal is here? Social climber parents who believe their own BS? Kid wants to make it as an influencer and this is just a handy, vacant persona to step into?
Besides the ones who have died (Dubroff, etc.), it turns out none had the training to reasonably attempt the flight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Dubroff
Besides the high risk to themselves, those flights involve SAR from various nations and often flow and landings at large airports with airliners, which those entities never asked to get involved with.
As an aside, the US Navy ended up searching for Amelia Earhart, so that shows the disruption of these flights.
As far as I can tell, nothing they're doing is illegal. Anyone can say they're training to go to Mars. Anyone can buy NASA t-shirts and any child can attend Space Camp. NASA doesn't regulate the use of its name in twitter and Instagram account names. In most cases it appears that the media either doesn't look very deeply into verifying these people are who they're presenting themselves to be or are willing participants in deceiving the public themselves. It makes for a nice article or fills airtime to have on a teenager in a flight suit covered in NASA patches talking about inspiring other youth to follow their path to becoming an astronaut.
But at least the young people in the article and the ones posing as "aspiring astronauts" have more common sense than the young lady who lost her internship with NASA because she was slinging profanities at a member of the agency's advisory board while celebrating her appointment.