Homer Hickam, opinion on Usenet and the LA Times...
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-hickam9feb09,0,6631818.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
...Does it make sense to have this many overachievers all walking on eggs,
vying for such a limited number of slots? Only in a dysfunctional
bureaucracy like NASA's astronaut office, which keeps hiring more
astronauts than it needs.
As a training manager, I was aware that many astronauts felt as if they
were
powerless, stressed-out peons within their own organization. I observed
their daily competition with one another to get a seat into space. In many
cases, this trial by fire changed enthusiastic young astronauts into
bureaucratic combatants with warped personalities and shaken confidence.
For a long time, I also have been aware of the corrosive resentment many
NASA engineers and scientists feel toward the astronauts. The astronauts
have a sense of entitlement, and what they want, they get, or so it seems.
For instance, I was in a meeting once in which an astronaut who only had a
few years of NASA experience constantly interrupted and belittled a
20-year
space engineering veteran. That's the kind of thing that fuels discontent.
My suggestion...
Good suggestion Homer, but my list would have been little broader than
scientist and engineers.
--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @
WeBeGood@GMail.Com
--
Esaz wrote:
He was on one of the news channels and basically implied that the
engineers were probably happy to see one of the astronauts fall of their
pedestal.
He even posts to usenet, hanging out in rec.sport.footable.college, and
occassionally gives insight on NASA/shuttle.
(Leave the dude alone. He seems a little bitter with NASA and HATES the
space shuttle. I just absorb whatever he throws out. His thoughts on
Helium-3 are pretty cool though.)
