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

arstechnica.com

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Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#71

Post by gumby »

> On the second day of the mission, Wang floated over to his experiment and sought to activate the Drop Dynamics Module. But it didn't work. He asked the NASA flight controllers on the ground if he could take some time to try to troubleshoot the problem and maybe fix the experiment. But on any Shuttle mission, time is precious. Every crew member has a detailed timeline, with a long list of tasks during waking hours. The flight controllers were reluctant.

The only justification for human spaceflight at all is that humans can fix things that a robot can't yet. Sounds like the whole approach to the misison profile was flawed, especially as he ultimately got it working.

Meanwhile the robots just quietly go about their work collecting almost all the data we have from space and celestial bodies.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#72

Post by _Algernon_ »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #28
wantsanagent wrote: post #17

If you hate the format of these kinds of article let me summarize: Guy builds an experiment, flies it, it doesn't work, requests more time to get it working, is denied, threatens 'not to come back', goes into a depression, worries crew that he'll open the door to space, eventually granted more time to work on the experiment, gets it working. There are consequences for letting this kind of person fly and dealing with…

> If you hate the format of these kinds of article You mean long-form articles? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-form_journalism I don't think the problem is with the format, but with your expectations. Somehow you were expecting a straight answer to the question in the title; instead, it's a detailed look into the incident and the context around it.

Journalism is intended to inform, which is why the inverted pyramid[1] is a thing. Withholding the important information is, IMHO, bad journalism.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#73

Post by happyraul »

prewett wrote: post #26

The article was interesting, but wow, reading that page used up 20% of my battery and required a reboot stop whatever it was causing excessive lag throughout the OS. I’ve noticed news sites are basically unusable on mobile. Sure I’m using an iPhone 7, but it’s fine for every other use except news site. If even Ars is this user hostile, I think I have to consider news sites as fundamentally user-antogonistic, and not…

It's worth noting that subscribers to Ars get an ad-free and tracking-free experience (unlike others such as the New York Times, YouTube, ...), which is why it is one of the few online subscriptions I pay for.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#74

Post by verisimi »

wantsanagent wrote: post #17

If you hate the format of these kinds of article let me summarize: Guy builds an experiment, flies it, it doesn't work, requests more time to get it working, is denied, threatens 'not to come back', goes into a depression, worries crew that he'll open the door to space, eventually granted more time to work on the experiment, gets it working. There are consequences for letting this kind of person fly and dealing with…

Good ai bot.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#75

Post by ciabattabread »

wackget wrote: post #67

When did Ars Technica start splitting articles into multiple pages? I thought that stupid trend died out 10 years ago. It just results in me abandoning the article on page 1.

It’s not split into multiple pages on my end.

And Ars had always split pages. Especially with the Siracusa Mac OS X reviews.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#76

Post by munchler »

gumby wrote: post #71

> On the second day of the mission, Wang floated over to his experiment and sought to activate the Drop Dynamics Module. But it didn't work. He asked the NASA flight controllers on the ground if he could take some time to try to troubleshoot the problem and maybe fix the experiment. But on any Shuttle mission, time is precious. Every crew member has a detailed timeline, with a long list of tasks during waking hours.…

> The only justification for human spaceflight at all is that humans can fix things that a robot can't yet.

That is a justification, but surely not the only one. For example, humans will eventually want to colonize the moon and other planets.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#77

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

wantsanagent wrote: post #17

If you hate the format of these kinds of article let me summarize: Guy builds an experiment, flies it, it doesn't work, requests more time to get it working, is denied, threatens 'not to come back', goes into a depression, worries crew that he'll open the door to space, eventually granted more time to work on the experiment, gets it working. There are consequences for letting this kind of person fly and dealing with…

Also when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back, he comes back and gets old and can't be reached for comment, but we can tell he came back because he's 83.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#78

Post by hutzlibu »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #72
GeoAtreides wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you hate the format of these kinds of article You mean long-form articles? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-form_journalism I don't think the problem is with the format, but with your expectations. Somehow you were expecting a straight answer to the question in the title; instead, it's a detailed look into the incident and the context around it.

Journalism is intended to inform, which is why the inverted pyramid[1] is a thing. Withholding the important information is, IMHO, bad journalism. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)

Do you think important information was withhold here? Which information was not important?

It was a investigative article, about an incident that happened long ago, with most participants already dead by today. If something is worth a long article - then this is.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#79

Post by BurningFrog »

boxed wrote: post #61

The limited access to space probably contributed to his mental episode. If he could be fairly confident in the experiment being flown again, it wouldn't have caused him this amount of stress. So in a way more access to space might lower the percentage of such episodes.

As far as we know, the "percentage" is just this guy, no?

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#80

Post by hutzlibu »

pif wrote: post #62
GeoAtreides wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you hate the format of these kinds of article You mean long-form articles? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-form_journalism I don't think the problem is with the format, but with your expectations. Somehow you were expecting a straight answer to the question in the title; instead, it's a detailed look into the incident and the context around it.

Is there a rule preventing an abstract from being added at the beginning of such an article? You know, just to understand rapidly whether the rest of the read matches your interest.

Yes, the rules of Dramaturgy. It is not a scientific paper, but at least partly meant to entertain.

And for most people it is very simple - they care about space and its challenges - and then they will read it - or they don't and find something else.

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