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posted by janrinok on Monday January 13 2020, @10:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the let's-hear-it-for-the-girls dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

After completing more than two years of basic training, the six women and seven men were chosen from a record-breaking 18,000 applicants representing a wide variety of backgrounds and specialties, from experienced pilots to scientists, engineers and doctors.

The group includes two candidates from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), which has participated in a joint training program with the US since 1983. "They are the best of the best: they are highly qualified and very diverse, and they represent all of America," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. They include five people of color, including the first Iranian-American astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli who flew combat missions in Afghanistan and holds an engineering degree from MIT.

The group, known as the "Turtles", wore blue flight jumpsuits and took turns approaching the podium to receive their astronaut pins, as one of their classmates paid tribute to their character and shared playful and heartfelt anecdotes.

After being selected in 2017, the class completed training in spacewalking at NASA's underwater Neutral Buoyancy Lab, robotics, the systems of the International Space Station, piloting the T-38 training jet and Russian language lessons.

They are the first to graduate since NASA announced the Artemis program to return to the Moon by 2024, this time on its south pole, as the US plans to place the next man and first woman on lunar soil and set up an orbital space station.

-- submitted from IRC

Related: Eyeing Moon, NASA hosts first public astronaut graduation ceremony


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @02:03PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @02:03PM (#942721)

    They can all watch from the ground while SpaceX lands on the Moon and Mars ahead of them.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Monday January 13 2020, @03:25PM (4 children)

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Monday January 13 2020, @03:25PM (#942749)

    Who do you think will be in those SpaceX capsules?

    It will be NASA astronauts [spacex.com].

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @04:18PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @04:18PM (#942772)

      Talking about Starship, not Crew Dragon. Crew Dragon only goes to the ISS. Starship goes everywhere. Since NASA isn't funding Starship - mostly they are complaining about it - there's no reason it has to be crewed by NASA astronauts. And it probably won't be.

      • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 13 2020, @04:45PM (1 child)

        by Freeman (732) on Monday January 13 2020, @04:45PM (#942781) Journal

        I agree with nitehawk, it would take a lot of specialized training, etc. to train your own Astronauts. It would be so much easier and frugal to use NASA Astronauts for the flights where you actually need a human.

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @07:17AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @07:17AM (#943013)

          Why do you think? I don't see where the huge cost or specialization is supposed to be. Primary things would seem to be gforce training, navigation sims, stress tests, underwater practice, and vacuum chamber practice. After that it's a matter of household things like what to do in a gas leak, etc. Nothing especially fancy. But I'd add two things beyond this:

          1) It makes sense to appeal to NASA since they're the only ones with any experience in this field, but I think this 'sense' is one of the things that's been starting to see our entire system stagnate if not decline. What I mean there is that this same sense around 2000 would have told you that Boeing would also be the ultimate authority on all things space since they'd been doing it for decades and ostensibly had all the best and brightest working for or advising them? Yet somehow it turns out that a programmer with 0 experience in space, but some nice ideas and a bit of smarts was able to soundly beat them? It really shouldn't be that surprising. Boeing today is not the Boeing of 50 years ago. And similarly NASA today is not the NASA of 50 years ago. But even 50 years ago when NASA was the premier organization, they were still mostly just winging it - much like SpaceX will have to because...

          2) SpaceX's goals, but short and long term, don't involve sending professional astronauts - but regular people. One of the first to-be astronauts for SpaceX's inaugural flight around the moon has already been announced. It's Yusaku Maezawa [wikipedia.org] - a Japanese billionaire entrepreneur. Okay, a billionaire entrepreneur is not a regular person, but you know what I mean. In any case when we start sending folks to Mars there will be genuinely normal people. In spite of all of the technical and complex work that will be being done, there will also need to be people cleaning toilets. Will be interesting to see how we handle this since indentured servitude makes the most sense (e.g. - free trip + work for 5 years to repay your debt), but that has a bit of a dodgy history now.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Monday January 13 2020, @05:16PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Monday January 13 2020, @05:16PM (#942792)

        Heck, is Crew Dragon even crewed by astronauts? I mean, it *could* be, it has the control panels, but it's designed to be operated autonomously/remotely. The "crew" in Crew Dragon are ISS crew, they're really just passengers while in the capsule.