NASA names astronauts picked for next Artemis Moon test flight NASA today named the Artemis Moon program's first crew of astronauts. Among them are the first woman, the first person of color, and the first Canadian set to blast off on a lunar mission Their mission, dubbed Artemis II, will be to perform a test flight assessing not only the space agency's most powerful rocket, the Space …
"Among them are the first woman, the first person of color, and the first Canadian"
The question is, are they the absolute best available options for the mission?
Tokenism is nearly as bad as racism, but unfortunately it seems to be the new black. I'm sure Malcolm X would have had something pithy to say about that. ... maybe something along the lines of “What gains? All you have gotten is tokenism — three or four Negroes in a job, or at a lunch counter, or on the Moon, or as Vice President, so the rest of you will be quiet.”
It's a crying shame that Malcolm didn't live to see a two-term, majority popular vote, black US President.
Tokenism is even worse than that as even if you do make it on your own merits some people are just going to think you did not.
If the Canadian was a female of color they would have got all three in one an could have got some more tokens on board? The fact they mentioned their make up rather just their record does raise the idea of Tokenism.
As for Obama did the backlash against him lead to the election of Trump?
“ As for Obama did the backlash against him lead to the election of Trump?”
For a bunch it was adding an extra zero to the cost of medical insurance.
Give us the House and we will stop Obama care!
An then. .
Give us the Senate and we will stop Obama care!
And then . . ,
Give us the President a we will stop Obama care!
Ha Ha Ha they bought that crap!
Here we go again, All the hearings, nothing will come of it except to split us more.
"As for Obama did the backlash against him lead to the election of Trump?"
No. If Obama could have run for a third term, he would have beaten Trump handily. People actually LIKE Obama.
Trump won because the other inelectable candidate chose to play the popular vote card and didn't pay enough attention to the electoral college.Trump didn't so much win, as his opponent lost.
Hopefully We, The People have learned an important lesson. I ain't holding my breath. People as a set are ineducable, and politicians know it.
NASA has so many applicants that they can massively over-specify the requirements for crew. I have many concerns about the Artemis missions but the a failure caused by a member of the crew is ridiculously unlikely, especially in comparison to SLS/Orion. (The most valuable contribution that SLS/Orion makes is huge delays that will provide time to retire many of the Starship HLS risks.)
Were those the "best available options"? Seems highly unlikely that automatically excluding well over half the population in the 60s and 70s resulted in choosing the best and brightest.
Of course I expected some of this thinly disguised racism. Like Tucker Carlson "just asking questions" whether they are the best options, with the unstated but implicit claim that the mere presence of two non white males means that we should ask if standards were compromised to include them.
"Were those the "best available options"?"
No, of course not. They had some of the best available options (female mathematicians of colour) in the back room, doing the calculations that allowed those missions to succeed.
It's a crying shame that NASA didn't see fit to train one or two of them up and send them aloft (nothing would focus the mind more on getting the numbers right than also getting to ride along), but those were the times that were.
The problem is NOT the demographics of the astronauts. The problem is NASA making their demographics the headline rather than the footnote.
I truly feel sorry for the astronauts. Privately they will forever wonder if their qualifications or their individual demographics are what made them the top choice for the mission.
I'm waiting for modern society to GROW UP to the point where "identity accomplishments" become MEANINGLESS.
Until then, in the name of doing the COOL thing of sending humans to the moon again [and it is MOST definitely WAY cool!], I have to keep an adequate supply of pink liquid containing bismuth salicylate on hand, in case of emergency projectile vomiting... because a VERY LOUD *MINORITY* of us *FEEL* (not think) that identity accomplishments actually MEAN something (and aren't merely the hackneyed ebony/ivory style virtue signalling, preachiness, and passively divisive manipulative messaging from THE LEFT that a LOT of us have grown sick of over the years)
And while we’re on the subject… why do we even have different names for the same profession based on nationality? Is this unique to spacefarers?
It’ll only get more ridiculous as the number of spacefaring nations increases, each desperately trying to come up with a catchy name that represents their nation.
They are all astronauts. End of. Rant over.
"Astronaut is not an English word, it's what the Romans would have called the people in their space program."
The word Astronaut is from the greek.
"Unfortunately, not having a word for zero - their launches never got off the ground"
The Latin for zero was nihil.
Yes, I know, their maths wasn't up to the concept in the modern sense ... but they still had a word for it.
Focusing on one thing and interpreting everything else only as it affects that one thing puts you far down the path of fanaticism.
If you had done some minimal research you would have found that Canada is a member of ESA and that ESA contributes the service module required for each SLS/Orion launch. The NASA's Office of the Inspector general costed the service module at $1B included in the $4B cost of an SLS Orion launch (excluding R&D and ground support infrastructure). On top of that, the international agreements makes Artemis and LOP-G very difficult for the US government to de-fund or cancel.
If you had complained about the cost, cadence or inflexibility I would have been right there with you but ESA have contributed a fair share for one seat on this flight.
Well they have, if it ever actually happens (The promotional video is now 5 years old, and the website has been static for about the same), already agreed to join the "Eurovision Asia Song Contest". The first contest should have 10 countries (Australia, China, Japan, Kazakhstan, Maldives, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, South Korea and Vanuatu).
Yeah, it's generating a strong feeling of Déjà vu in me.
I'm quite excited to see this all going on, but a definite feeling of "we already did all this years ago". Test launch to orbit,manned mission *around* the Moon and eventually an actual landing. I do hope that the US will be "achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." Oh, wait, that was 1963, not 2023 :-)
None of the astronauts are smiling in this photo. They all look like they are posing for a Hollywood movie poster before they blast off on a one-way mission to save the planet from evil aliens.
Seriously, whiskey-tango-foxtrot. "My country is spending billions to make me the the first <demographic here> on the moon, and I cannot even appear happy about it." Are none of them proud, happy, or thrilled to be selected for this mission??
A quick search for Apollo crew photos and there are ample smiles all around. Yes, NASA is known for carefully managing the public image of their astronauts. Interesting how they are choosing to depict current crews compared to 50 years ago.
The last remaining astronauts who walked on the moon are not getting any younger:
Buzz Aldrin (age 93)
David Scott (aged 90)
Charles Duke (aged 87)
Harrison Schmitt (aged 87)
"get on up" as a famous musician once said (James Brown, 1970 - Get Up)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
