UnNews:NASA: Normal people to be astronauts
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| NASA: Normal people to be astronauts | 
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13 November 2015
HOUSTON, Texas -- NASA has called for normal people to apply to be astronauts. The US space agency is looking for recruits to spruce up the “new astronaut” page at NASA.gov, as well as prepare for a mission to Mars slated to take place long after they have died.
Since presenting the Mercury Seven in 1958, NASA has selected over 300 astronauts for missions in space. Twelve so far have walked on the moon, though that was 46 years ago, and others have explored the depths of the Atlantic Ocean alongside Cape Canaveral. NASA administrator Charles Bolden said this was an exciting time to be a part of the space program — “certainly compared to the Middle Ages or the Prehistoric Era” — and believes NASA has started a heady new phase in the “evolution of human space flight,” at which the new US astronauts will be “center-stage.”
Stirring stuff, but NASA's entry requirements make it incredibly difficult to become an astronaut. Applicants must not only be US citizens but smart and accomplished and even useful to the mission — a pilot, engineer, scientist or doctor, perhaps — two requirements that are mutually exclusive.
Applicants also have to pass the NASA long-duration space flight physical test; although here, failure is not an option, as floating in zero gravity is “no heavy lifting,” Mr. Bolden quipped.
Last but not least, you need a space ship to go in, and that is where NASA itself has pulled the abort handle. Bolden admits: “Houston has a problem, insofar as it has no space ships anymore with which to have a problem, leaving networks to vent air-time to the vacuum of sports. However, the job of the modern astronaut will be no different than astronauts past, except for the going-to-space bit. What it means is we are now doing this not because it is hard, but because it is easy; so we can relax the rules.”
The NASA Chief went on to say that for public relations and funding, the astronaut has always played a role far bigger than the nine-day mission they were scheduled to fly — after just five more years sat in a pressure chamber testing a diaper.
Mr. Bolden concluded: “NASA will welcome applications from any budding Buzz who's had the measles and looks good in an orange space suit. Applicants must adapt to lengthy periods of claustrophobic isolation in environments more hostile than the TV room in the basement, and having every orifice probed daily by cold steel instruments without even the hope of posting the details on their Facebook page.”
The call for new astronauts comes at the same time that college students have gone on strike for four free years of college education and the firing of any college administrators who ignore Non-negotiable Demands to teach African American separatism as they do at Missou. The protests did not live up to their billing as the "Million Student March" — drawing only 30 kids at CCNY — because blacks are counted as three-fifths of a person. Mr. Bolden suggested that the young demonstrators, with their knack for public relations, might be just what NASA needs, and the agency could “kill two birds with one stone” and fire them into space.
Sources[edit]
- Amelia Butterly "Nasa wants people to apply to be astronauts". BBC Newsbeat, November 5, 2015
- Jillian Berman "Thousands of students, activists take to the streets demanding debt-free college". Associated Press, November 12, 2015