For any job that I sign up to work at, after training, I always intend to eventually perform the same tasks for the company that their current employees do. With the last shuttle mission scheduled to lift off in June, this is not the case for former or upcoming NASA astronauts. They went through years upon years of school and eventually years of training to live out their childhood dream: to be able to feel the weightlessness of no gravity.
Unfortunately, this dream that once seemed to be finally inside the grasp of their hands, has sadly taken an abrupt turn and is starting to veer out of sight. President Obama has curtailed the NASA’s human spaceflight program. After the space shuttle launch in June there were plans to have two more programs lift off and take astronauts to the moon once again, but that unfortunately has been curtailed with the human spaceflight program. Instead, NASA is reaching out and hiring outside companies to devise alternatives.
According to the article “Morale is pretty low,” said Leroy Chiao, a former astronaut who now works for a company that wants to offer space flights for tourists. “This is a time of great uncertainty.” The future looks very grim for our astronauts if they are already seeking to be hired onto companies that cannot even offer space flights yet. Chances are the astronauts may be too old to fly whenever the time does come when the space chase enters the tourist industry. It’s either the astronauts find jobs like Chiao or over the next few years, American astronauts will be competing for a handful of slots on the International Space Station, flying there on Russian Soyuz capsules. This is an option for many of the American astronauts, but some are experiencing difficulties with flying on the Soyuz capsules.
For example, Capt. D Altman of the Navy has flown four missions for NASA, but at six feet and four inches he does not fit inside of a Soyuz capsule. Finally, when the Obama administration made the plans to scrap the Constellation and Ares I programs Altman decided it was time for him to depart from NASA.
In the future inspiring astronauts will not imagine working for NASA, but will instead aspire to be a part of one of the many companies offering space flights for tourists or for cargo heading towards the International Space Station. Virgin Galactic is already seeking three space pilots for its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane which may being space tourism next year. Do not expect to fly to the moon just yet though, because the SpaceShipTwo will only take suborbital hops and you will only experience a few minutes of weightlessness. In some tourists’ eyes a few minutes could seem like a lifetime.
Whether it is with NASA or with a coinciding company, the space race has all of a sudden come to a halt. Earth is now not the only place that is suffering from job cuts and dead end careers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/science/space/24astronaut.html?ref=science
No comments:
Post a Comment