Are Astronauts Heroes?

[4drugmoney]

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soldiers - too much variance to generalize. I think, in large part, they're people who got into the service because it was one of the only things they were qualified to do and too poor to get other training.

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This is one of the most ignorant things I have read on 2+2.


Also, I tried to come up with a lame Astronaut Kidnapping their rival lover joke, but I got nothing.

[Jenno99]

I'm a teacher and I certainly don't think of myself or my colleagues as heroes, although I believe we should strive to be role models.

I consider a hero to be someone who puts their life on the line for the benefit of others. A firefighter taking risks in a burning building would qualify, as would a soldier fighting for his country.

Astronauts have a dangerous job for the scientific advancement of mankind so I see going up into space is an heroic act.

[katyseagull]

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This is one of the most ignorant things I have read on 2+2.




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For some reason it appears you are attributing this quote to diebitter. I'm pretty sure those aren't his words.

[katyseagull]

Not all astronauts go into space. They can wait for years performing lab studies and research.

Regarding Lisa Nowak (who was arrested for stalking her rival in Florida),

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... the astronauts come under constant scrutiny by their management to determine who will fly and who will not. Some never get assigned to a space mission, yet they are called astronauts as long as they work for NASA.

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Nowak was hired as an astronaut in 1996. It was a decade before she flew into space. During that time, she was passed over again and again. Somewhere along the line during those disappointing years, I think she became brittle. She finally flew, landed and then was sent to the back of the astronaut line again.


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Off topic -- Some people (mainly her lawyer and family) have suggested that Lisa Nowak is a victim of the NASA culture, pressured to be a super achiever, put in a position where she waited 10 yrs to go into space, forced to try to compete with more and more hirees (sp?), etc. Is it possible that the astronaut program is partially to blame for her emotional meltdown?

[bogey1]

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politicians - Nope, barring a very very few examples. I think in this day of age, politics prevents heroes from getting anywhere in politics.

artists - Nope, no altruism or desire to help others here. It's about self expression by and large.

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Can you think of any politicians you would have considered heroes? Kennedy maybe?

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Kennedy maybe. Lincoln most likely. A man in bad spot in the nations worst crisis ever and he rose to the challenge.

Winston Churchill definitely.

Few and far between though. Politicians lose their entire career if they try something heroic and it doesn't pan out, that makes them very risk adverse. Even if it does pan out, it's rarely going to do as much good as it could have done harm.

I think most "heroic" acts occur when people feel they don't have much to lose or don't have time to think about it. Rushing in to save a woman in a burning house I can hear screaming help, yea, I probably do it because I don't have time to really think about it.

Give me 2 hours to save someone and I'm going to think about my wife and kids, what I have to lose and hey, maybe I can just help plan it and get someone else to do the dangerous part...

[4drugmoney]

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This is one of the most ignorant things I have read on 2+2.




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For some reason it appears you are attributing this quote to diebitter. I'm pretty sure those aren't his words.

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What? Did you read the thread?

[KittyKat]

I have in the past few months read a few books written by astronauts and looked into what qualifies as the "right stuff". Becoming an astronaut is an incredible process. It's giving up so much of your life to a bureaucracy that will abuse you, just for the chance to strap yourself on top of a rocket that has a decent chance of killing you.

There are plenty of astronauts that I consider heroes, if only because of how much self sacrifice and work they have inside of them. I aspire to that, if nothing else.

[ChipWrecked]

I admire astronauts and the Apollo 11 crew where huge heroes of mine when I was a kid.

I think astronauts' hero status has been diminished somewhat by NASA's continuing to donk around with an obsolete space shuttle, fulfilling political obligations on a derelict space station when we should be getting on with the business of establishing bases on the Moon and Mars, with the long range goal being permanent colonization both there and perhaps further out on moons or asteroids.

[KittyKat]

From what I understand, the space station is necessary as a means of studying the long term affects of the human body in zero gravity. There's no point in spending billions and billions to build colonies on mars if our current science means we can't survive in space for more than a year.

[ChipWrecked]

Wiki spaceflight records

Valeri Polyakov, launched 8 January 1994 (Soyuz TM-18), stayed at Mir LD-4 for 437.7 days, during which he orbited the earth about 7,075 times and traveled 300,765,000 km, (186,887,000 miles) returned March 22, 1995 (Soyuz TM-20).


"...the primary feature of a space-based laboratory is its microgravity environment, which can usually be studied more cheaply with a vomit comet -- that is, an aircraft which flies in parabolic arcs."




"NASA must complete the ISS so it can be dropped into the ocean on schedule in finished form."
—Robert L. Park

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