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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?

#121

Post by IshKebab »

voytec wrote: post #53
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.

>> If you hate the format of these kinds of article > You mean long-form articles? I think the grandparent meant blabbering to get to 3k words.

I don't think this article is guilty of that. Maybe OP thought this was one of those " ... Dave lives in a small house nestled into the hills of rural Wales. He has long flowing hair and a slight stutter. His three children - Mary, Anna-belle and Calista - have long sense left home and he spends most of his time blah blah blah blah I don't care."

This isn't that thought.

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

#122

Post by webdoodle »

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…

They are worried these 'dangerous' ideas will be contagious, so they censor them in an attempt to stop the spread. It sounds a lot like what the whole world continues to go through today...

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

#123

Post by dylan604 »

Guvante wrote: post #118
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 fai…

> After all failures are money wasted.

sometimes, you have to test ideas out to make sure the idea you are currently going with is the best one. sure, maybe it's working now, but is there a way to do it cheaper, faster, safer? sometimes, you have to spend the money to test to find out. sometimes, those tests don't work. are those tests failures, or are they just reinforcement that the current idea is the better option?

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

#125

Post by btilly »

stcredzero wrote: post #112
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,…

Sounds like an AI version of Tipler's Von Neumann probe argument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#De...

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

#126

Post by Zelphyr »

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…

I'm reminded of this quote from Men In Black: "Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

Given the number of people I know personally who think Bill Gates wants to inject us with microchips, I can see why NASA wouldn't want these stories to get out.

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

#127

Post by GeoAtreides »

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…

> No, this is not simply "long-form", this is "in medias res"

This is like saying: This is not simply a mug, this is porcelain. Narrative and narrative technique are two different things, just like the function of an object is different thing than the material of the object.

It's also probably just a hook, not a full "in media res".

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

#128

Post by no-dr-onboard »

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…

"In medias res" vs "longform" is an important distinction, as you've highlighted. As the parent commented, a lot of this has to do with how we frame the article via the title. The title sets the expectation for the article. In this case, it provides a misleading ethos for discerning audiences.

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

#129

Post by arccy »

wiredfool wrote: post #97
_Algernon_ wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

The whole point of the inverted pyramid was that editors/layout people could chop off the article at any point to fit the space available and have it still make sense, back when newspapers were laid out in columns and on physical pages. It's not an idealized platonic form information transfer.

editors can chop off the article, but readers can also stop engaging when they've decided they've obtained enough detail without losing out.

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

#130

Post by gadders »

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…

>>There are consequences for letting this kind of person fly and dealing with mental health while on a mission, but that's the basic plot.

See also the woman that (allegedly) tried to drill holes in the ISS so she could return to earth early.

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