Oh noes! Euronaut affirmative action!
Zut alors! I am in space!
So the European Space Agency (yeah, they have one!) is holding tryouts for astronauts! They’ll pick the first Euro-spacepersons since 1992(!). When this was announced, apparently reporters were badgering the ESA spokesdrone with questions like “From which of the countries that fund your agency will the space-men come?” and “Will some of the space-men be ladies?”, because she kept repeating over and over again that “excellence” was the only criteria for selection.
Here’s the thing, though: there will be four space-persons picked, out of 8,400 applicants. That’s like 0.04 percent. I’m pretty sure that there will be more than four totally excellent people in the pool; it’s not like you’ll be able to stick them all into some kind of excellence-quantifying machine and rank them by EQ (excellent quotient). So, you know what? I think that, once you’ve got the pool winnowed down to the, say, two or three dozen excellentest folks who come out of this process, it’s totally legitimate to start making decisions based on, say, making sure the governments who pay your bills are not pissed off, or on not continuing to exclude women from macho jobs.
Sort of interesting online since at least 2004.
May 19th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Try-outs for astronauts? What is this, the Arena Football League? That’s got to be some sort of cheap publicity gimmick. If I cared enough, I would write the ESA to advise them to select the four woman applicants with the biggest tits. Perhaps you could do this for me.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Wow! I’m a relatively recent CC fan and, while I enjoy the blog, can’t claim to have been present at the inception of that august publication. However, I’m completely front and center for the creation of the Josh Fruhlinger Experience! Most of my time on this blog will be spent condescending to new readers on the Comments pages: “Oh, you’re a new reader? Yeah, that’s great. Some of us have been reading this blog for years. Look guys – another rookie!”
I can’t help but believe this is what an early investor in Google must have felt, except early investors in Google are now billionaires and, well, this blog is never ever going to make me (or for that matter, Josh) any money at all.
May 20th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Ah, but remember that ladies in space need Special Toilet Accommodation. (Or this was NASA’s excuse, anyway; the Soviets seemed to manage okay.)
Given that there is already a complex political bathroom dispute on the space station (I can’t remember the sordid details), this could only cause more confusion.
I’m pretty certain that candidates are only being looked at from contributor countries, anyway.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Whatever criteria they use, I’ll bet we end up with one Englishperson, one French person, one woman, and either an Afro-European or an Asian-European.
If a French citizen who happens to be a triathelete, an Indian woman, and a pHd in stellar evolution makes the team, then I guess there is a chance that a German or an Italian might make it.
Speaking of space toilets, long long ago on the other side of town, I helped design the water treatment system for the Space Station (and here you thought I just lurked around Joshreads posting poorly spelled posts). NASA ended up ditching a whole book of their safety specs and using a Russian made system instead.
A few months ago when they orbited the HAB module and had a bunch of trouble getting the “space toilet” to work, I stood my the phone, waiting for NASA to call and send me up to install our old deliverable. Alas, they finally got the thing working without me.
Perhaps our problem was the name of the component we were making: The ISA ECLSS PCWQM-SEU-ICSA. I believe the name changed five times during the seven years I worked on the project, and each time the name got longer.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Somebody just reminded me that thusfar there has been only one citizen of the UK in space (this despite several James Bond movies to the contrary). And she wasn’t even an astronaut, but rather a chocolate chemist for Mars (the maker of the bar, not the planet). She won a similar contest back in the early ninties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Sharman
So I’m even more convinced that an Englishperson will make the cut this time around. I vote for Prince Harry.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
I’m fairly certain it’s been determined that women are generally better suited for space travel due to their (on average) smaller frames. Something to do with weightlessness or any of that other outerspace mumbo jumbo.
Of course, if that’s the case, I’d think the ESA would be far more interested in finding as many qualified European midgets as possible.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:48 am
Isn’t the UK one of the non-funding nations? I know they’re setting up a training programme (BBC referred to these as the first “official British astronauts”, implying that there may have been some who were doing it on the quiet), but I’d be amazed if they’re up there in the next few years, especially as the ESA part of the ISS is getting more expensive.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:49 am
David: It may just be the ~$10,000 per kilo launch price
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:09 pm
The UK’s space program has an annual budget of nearly half a billion, and some of this goes to ESA funding. In fact, they recently revived their astronaut program: http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/7320.aspx.
As far as I’m concerned, Major Tim Peake lacks one important qualification: He does not particularly resemble Emma Peel.
June 17th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
“I think that, once you’ve got the pool winnowed down to the, say, two or three dozen excellentest folks who come out of this process, it’s totally legitimate to start making decisions based on, say, making sure the governments who pay your bills are not pissed off, or on not continuing to exclude women from macho jobs.” Excellent point! Couldn’t be excellenter, I’d say.