I'm going ahead and deciding that astronaut is no longer the awesome job I thought it was when I was younger. I'm good on that.
Another astronaut comments on what the Crew-9 people can expect: "The returning astronauts will "struggle to walk, get dizzy easily, and have bad eyesight", because the "build-up of fluid changes the shape of their eyeballs, and weakens their vision". They may need glasses for the rest of their lives."
Living without gravity seems to be harder on some than others. Valery Polyakov spent 435 days in space, longer than anyone else. He apparently didn't suffer much in the way of after-effects, had a good post-flight career, and died at age 80.
That particular launch window only occurs once every two years. The Earth and Mars rotate around the Sun at different rates. During some periods Mars is on the other side of the Sun and essentially unreachable with our current level of delta-v.
> latest optimistic prediction
Will that be before or after fully self driving cars? Or electric semis? That drive themselves in road trains? Will those astronauts have neuralink chips in their heads?
> re-adapting to gravity on arrival will be an issue.
It's 1/3 gravity. Then again, you're on a ship with no free return abort trajectory available, I'd worry more about medical emergencies, crew temperament, and actual crimes being committed.
The point is, they are expected to say they enjoyed every minute of it in front of the camera. And if they really didn’t we may not hear about it.
I really hope they'll at some point clearly say either "well, of course we missed our families, but really, getting such an opportunity was AWESOME and Boeing's misfortune was a huge lucky event for us" or "Being up there is awesome, but quite honestly, having to do it unexpectedly really sucked".
And I don't think that it is the slightest bit unprofessional to have feelings about where you spent a year of your life, or to talk about those feelings.
I think it’s cultural. Astronauts I think are more disciplined and more professional on average than an average Joe. Even if they hated it they probably wouldn’t mention it publicly. Maybe after they retire from NASA completely.
All astronauts are military service members. I'd expect nothing less.
Contributing to bringing Earth to a state where it will have to be "terraformed" itself: not so cool
in space human slave is literally most expensive labor you can choose, automatons is the way
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
- Werner von Braun
The worst political nonsense I get caught in means a phone call. Not an extended stay with potential life-lasting or shortening effects. Rad is different for everyone :)
Captain Paperclip would have encouraged the negative path, yes.
maybe you must see real world first, drinkable water and plant is literally of the most rare thing in the universe surpassing mineral and metal, one of the most abundant things in space
also if you born poor in earth, many people would take a chance to do space industry at all in the future despite the risk
Before we had machines to put in our factories, we had hordes of dead laborers. Regulations are written in blood. Then we had company towns and truly brutal police enforcement.
Why will humans work there? Partly for the reason you gave: poverty. That makes them particularly expendable, offering themselves to the 'chance' as you say.
edit: My bias is obvious, I work in SRE - not development. I don't create things, I deal with the fallout of creation. It's a lot like that.
also human is expensive, if fleet of human slave is cheap then we outsource all of our work to china and india. but that don't happen we build a trillion dollar industry (AI and robotic) to make all of that
I don't see a collaborative trip through the cosmos, I see a very unhealthy relationship with danger to boot
This may be all the more reason for robots, but again: humans take no engineering. Just a few minutes and a lot of tries (heh, sex joke). They'll literally pay for themselves.
RE: outsourcing, I don't know what you mean/where you are. That's exactly what's been happening, here. Consistently. For decades. Many ventures can happen.
also human is fragile, weak, costly, too long to make it productive. it takes 15+ year for human to be any useful at all (and not counting experience)
do you think these space corp would just sit 15+ year revenue of upkeep going to waste only the next day human employee die because some dust near light speed particle hit the station???
nooo, slavery human space is not practical because is not cost effective economy wise
But right now, we don't have working practical self replicating robots, but we do have humans. The cost of the 15+ years is externalized, you can just lure a desperate already-grown human with shiny promises, give them some training, and ship them off.
Yes, you have to ship them oxygen and food, which is expensive, but it's a solution that exists and works with todays technology (minus some well-defined engineering), while the robots aren't ready yet.
also space is vast and empty, even with spaceship that has near light speed it still take years to even reach the destination not even counting do extract resources or back go to earth
human literally CAN'T do that
Humans are currently much, much better at doing varied, unexpected tasks. We will at some point likely get more universal robotics, but right now I think there's a very good chance we'll get humans to Mars before we get the robots to work.
Yeah that's why we build trillion dollar industry to make it 'think'