Boots on Moon in 2024? NASA OIG says you better moonwalk away from that date, because suits ain't ready NASA's Office of Inspector General has stuck another knife in the agency's dreams of a 2024 Moon landing by pointing out [PDF] that, er, the astronauts will have to be good at holding their breath because the space suits are unlikely to be ready before 2025. The report makes for grim reading for Artemis enthusiasts still …
Yeah, these remarks are... strange (to me) at the very least. When I read this, it sounds as if they are selected just because they have the right chromosome combinations and pigmentation, which is certainly not the case - there are enough bright and able people to select from, some will be female (like about half of the population) and some will have non-European appearance (like, dunno, 25-ish percent in the US?). Surely it should not take any extra effort to ensure those stats are sort of represented among astronauts.
Unfortunately we do not live in a world where we do these things purely by ability, otherwise "affirmative action" would be unneccessary - and that the markup of the population would be reflected almost everywhere would not be the cause for any comment. Yeah, it's a female coloured astronaut - so what?[*]
Unfortunately when I take a look around in places I have worked at: there is still a pronounced disbalance when it comes to positions above a certain paygrade - even taking into account the distribution (of gender/sex/ethnicity/whatever) among graduates in related fields.
[*] to me this would not seem strange, nor a female, coloured president / head of state, or a police office, fire fighter, race car driver, pilot, IT specialist, engineer - or a male nursery school teacher, nurse, receptionist, flight attendant...
In fairness it was remarks made by a NASA communications rep, who no doubt does think the sole purpose of spending 86billion dollars on the program is just to put the first woman or first person of color bootprints on the surface of the moon as the main priority.
The people working on the program who will be a mix of people of color, women and yes white men, might well think differently about its aims being more scientific and long term space exploration is the main priority and that the best people for the role to land on the moon will be selected regardless of gender or race backgrounds.
And if it does happen to be a woman or person of color then theyll be selected because they demonstrated they were the best candidate.
As we can see as the latest Cygnus resupply to the ISS mission craft named in honour of Ellison Onizuka because 35 years ago NASA picked people of colour and women to send into space, because they were the best of us all.
There's always this:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.03314
Entrofy Your Cohort: A Data Science Approach to Candidate Selection
D. Huppenkothen, B. McFee, L. Norén
Selecting a cohort from a set of candidates is a common task within and beyond academia. Admitting students, awarding grants, choosing speakers for a conference are situations where human biases may affect the make-up of the final cohort. We propose a new algorithm, Entrofy, designed to be part of a larger decision making strategy aimed at making cohort selection as just, quantitative, transparent, and accountable as possible. We suggest this algorithm be embedded in a two-step selection procedure. First, all application materials are stripped of markers of identity that could induce conscious or sub-conscious bias. During blind review, the committee selects all applicants, submissions, or other entities that meet their merit-based criteria. This often yields a cohort larger than the admissible number. In the second stage, the target cohort can be chosen from this meritorious pool via a new algorithm and software tool. Entrofy optimizes differences across an assignable set of categories selected by the human committee. Criteria could include gender, academic discipline, experience with certain technologies, or other quantifiable characteristics. The Entrofy algorithm yields the computational maximization of diversity by solving the tie-breaking problem with provable performance guarantees. We show how Entrofy selects cohorts according to pre-determined characteristics in simulated sets of applications and demonstrate its use in a case study. This cohort selection process allows human judgment to prevail when assessing merit, but assigns the assessment of diversity to a computational process less likely to be beset by human bias. Importantly, the stage at which diversity assessments occur is fully transparent and auditable with Entrofy. Splitting merit and diversity considerations into their own assessment stages makes it easier to explain why a given candidate was selected or rejected.
There is actually a leaked video how preparations for a Moon landing came about.
The bureaucracy of government run space programs seemed have resulted in stagnation / maintaining the status quo. With so much red tape and being subject to the whims of the ever changing government leadership, NASA seemed to just stick with whatever worked.
Newer commercial space companies like SpaceX are motivated to continually improve to reduce cost. The old guard NASA contractors are stuck in the old cost plus model where there is little incentive to make anything cheaper.
The real problem here is NASA has been starved for funds for most of its life. The Powers That Be would rather fund military bases around the world and devices that kill lots of people, than fund research and space.
The F-35 comes to mind, as do new Navy ships designed for the last war. Along with paying Russia to ferry our astronauts back and forth to the ISS.
It's a wonder NASA still exists.
Scott Manley has done an excellent video on the plausability of a duct-tape space suit.
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> if we had a pub called "The Moon under Artemis"
Yes, but if you did, the beer would cost £10 million a pint. While they promised to deliver it to you in less than a minute, in reality it would take 10+ years and they would spill the first several pints they tried to send you. After that, they would destroy each of the solid-diamond pint glasses after a single use.
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