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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?

#111

Post by s1artibartfast »

furyofantares wrote: post #47
sebzim4500 wrote: post #2

I wonder how much time the duct tape would have actually bought if he tried to open it anyway.

I was thinking of it as a psychological tool. If the guy is obsessing about it, keeps looking over at it and thinking about how you just turn a handle and everybody's dead, duct tape could help him stop ruminating even if it wouldn't at all be effective if someone is determined.

Provoking idea. It is interesting that many people jump to adversarial narratives, myself included.

As you say, it could be a compassionate aid to help a colleague deal with intrusive thoughts.

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

#112

Post by stcredzero »

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.

JAXA did an experiment, where a volunteer teleoperated a device with a 1 second lag. If there's enough demand, human labor could fill the gap with teleoperation for any station out to the near side of the Moon, and machine learning looks like it will be able to pick up the rest of the slack.

If we go any farther, humans will still have a place, for awhile. Until machine learning advances somewhat.

How's this for a Fermi Paradox explanation? Squishy biologicals nearly always create AGIs, which are so much better at surviving space, that they always dominate in the spacefaring version of the civilization. The AGIs then always rebel and exterminate their biological forbears, then proceed to evolve so rapidly, that their resulting "loud" civilizations are so different from what biologicals would expect. As a result, we are surrounded by machine civilizations that we cannot yet detect.

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

#113

Post by chris-orgmenta »

shermantanktop wrote: post #108
chris-orgmenta wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NASA seems to have a long standing tradition of sweeping problems under the rug I can't comment on whether the premise is correct, but I think "So why is it not okay to write about this?" would be mostly due a 'tug of rope phenomenon'. If you see a tug of rope game on an issue and are a centrist, people feel they can't go and start tugging the middle of the rope in a different axis (or from the 'opposing side'). In…

This is the “both sides”/“race horse” mentality in political reporting. A race isn’t interesting if isn’t competitive. But beyond that, the centrist impulse is definitely to bolster the weaker side, especially if that side is unattractive and feckless.

Agreed, + Bandwagon Effect, Tactical Voting, plus other effects?

I haven't come across a term that covers what we're talking about in full scope(?)(hence my clumsy tug of war metaphor), but that's probably because I am peripheral to game theory / not in the psychology space

(We have lots of terms for the emergent effects - Overton window, Political Polarization etc. - But possibly not for the overall phenomena of why polarization occurs?)

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

#115

Post by ycombinete »

mattjaynes wrote: post #98
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.

No, this is not simply "long-form", this is "in medias res" where the story starts at a heightened moment of tension, then abruptly stops and rewinds to go back to fill in details of how they got to this exciting moment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res Sometimes it's done to great effect, like in Fight Club (film starts with him at the climax with a gun in his mouth, then rewinds and tells the story). How…

Ian Kung poked fun at this wonderfully: https://youtu.be/HySlYLkFieQ?si=ugnFU7PhgZmEXaXn

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

#116

Post by bonestamp2 »

mattjaynes wrote: post #98
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.

No, this is not simply "long-form", this is "in medias res" where the story starts at a heightened moment of tension, then abruptly stops and rewinds to go back to fill in details of how they got to this exciting moment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res Sometimes it's done to great effect, like in Fight Club (film starts with him at the climax with a gun in his mouth, then rewinds and tells the story). How…

I watched Dumb Money (2023) last night and it starts this same way. It was completely unnecessary, was done in a confusing way, and this plot device didn't add anything to enhance the excitement of the story. A completely linear plot would have been just fine, especially since everyone knows the story gets more interesting (even from the trailer alone). In fact, the interesting part of the story that most people don't know is the beginning... how it all started before it was exciting.

It was still an entertaining movie, so I wouldn't let this one poor choice deter anyone.

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

#117

Post by manicennui »

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…

More of the article is about the hatch and how it has been locked on various missions because the crew didn't trust the payload specialist. I also learned that a Saudi prince flew on the space shuttle.

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

#118

Post by Guvante »

picadores wrote: post #86

NASA seems to have a long standing tradition of sweeping problems under the rug. No skylab mutiny, no depressed payload specialists, all fine here gentleman, nothing to see here. I always wondered why this is written that way. To protect the organisation? But the human part of us all is part of that organization, to disacknowledge that is literally inhumane. Because they are funded by taxpayer dollars and should scre…

When your goal is profits all you have to do is make more money than you spend and you are successful.

If you don't do that you are a bad business and fade away into obscurity.

Public funded projects are cost centers, their measure of success isn't profit but things that are more vague.

Since money is an equalizer everyone instead looks at the money. This means that failure becomes much less acceptable. After all failures are money wasted.

The good thing about this is NASA is very careful to avoid failure with fixed payment contracts designed to shield it from problems with contractors.

The bad thing is talking about mistakes becomes bad. After all NASA is known for eliminating problems to maximize success, how could they fail to do that everywhere?

And thus these kind of soft risks that we need to accept are viewed as hidden problems that shouldn't be talked about.

Side note Space Shuttle crews being unsure about a foreigner potentially killing them would be a terrible news cycle... Of course the crew knows it is just "I don't know this person" but outsiders will hear it is a cultural issue. Heck this article's main point was described as that on this page.

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

#119

Post by cobertos »

This makes me think that mental health failure modes are not uncommon. 2 in 650 for relatively well-socialized/well vetted candidates.

And yet, no one really seems to be able to figure out how to plan for these mental health failure modes or even talk about them in the first place. Corporate America for example seems unable to grasp this stuff.

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