In honor of NASA’s current round of the astronaut selection process:
(from Dinosaur Comics. If you’re interested, there’s also a t-shirt.)
Cosmic Variance is a group blog by people who, coincidentally or not, all happen to be physicists and astrophysicists:
Our day (and night) jobs notwithstanding, the blog is about whatever we find interesting — science, to be sure, but also arts, politics, culture, technology, academia, and miscellaneous trivia. We have similar outlooks on many things, widely disparate opinions about others, and will do our best to keep the discourse reasonably elevated.
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November 14th, 2008 at 6:10 am
I wonder who they think the thirteenth astronaut is?
November 14th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Every comic comes equip with bonus jokes: the alt text and the subject line automatically suggested by “comments.” So “you may be wondering who the thirteenth person on the moon is. it’s t-rex! he left his wallet there once. it was by ACCIDENT.”
November 14th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
But sausages are delicious!
November 14th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I think there’s a documentary on how women were trained for the moon missions but was not called to go.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Yeah, women were just not taken seriously in the 60s. (And BTW, the “Movement” that was pushing for more civil rights, ecology, anti-war etc. had many leaders also contemptuous of women taking big strides. Look up the history.) I don’t know when the first Asian made it. However, a black astronaut was picked way back on June 30, 1967! Sadly few of the general public know of him. That is partly because he died in a training flight and never went up. Check this out, but I think there is an error (Bluford was the first black American up, but a Cuban went before him – see below):
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmfirsts.html
First astronaut:
Robert H. Lawrence, Jr., 1967, was the first black astronaut, but he died in a plane crash during a training flight and never made it into space. Guion Bluford, 1983, became the first black astronaut to travel in space; Mae Jemison, 1992, became the first black female astronaut. Frederick D. Gregory, 1998, was the first African-American shuttle commander.
But here’s a better rundown from a board, at http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question86253.html:
cag1970
Let’s straighten this out:
Captain Edward Dwight (USAF) was the first black person to train as an astronaut. He trained from 1962 to 1966, but was never designated to a specific program. He’s made his living as an artist and monument sculptor since then.
Major Robert H. Lawrence (USAF) was the first black person to be assigned to a specific space program–specifically, the Air Force’s Manned Orbital Laboratory program (successor to the X-20 program).
Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez (Cuba) was the first person of African ancestory AND the first Hispanic speaker to travel in space. He flew with Yuri Romanenko on Soyuz 38 September 18-26, 1980.
As a matter of course, neither Dwight nor Lawrence qualify as astronauts, under the definitions of the FAI, NASA or the US military. Dwight and Lawrence were, more correctly, astronaut-candidates. Tamayo Méndez is considered a cosmonaut, techincally, because he traveled on board a Soviet spacecraft. But his flight into space predated Bluford’s journey on board STS-8 by almost three years.
http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=157
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnaldo_Tamayo-Mendez
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Henry_Lawrence%2C_Jr.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronaut#Insignia
Sep 22 07, 9:22 PM
[end quote]
November 14th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Now that’s the best reason yet for going back to the moon! Because women have never been there!
Heh.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Dude, it’s a cartoon about dinosaurs. Not to be confused with official CV policy.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
I want that shirt. That is all.
November 15th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Apologies, Julianne.
For a second I thought I was at Bad Astronomy! ;^}
November 15th, 2008 at 10:16 am
At the start anyway, they got all their astronauts from fighter pilots. Of course in those days they were all men. I think Harrison Schmidt (a geologist) was the first non-military person and scientist sent on a space mission.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Just for the record and to clarify: the topic cartoon was about astronauts who landed on the Moon, but I made a segue into the issue of minority astronauts in general. As for returning to the Moon: I don’t think it is worth spending all that money for that or for going to Mars – in the foreseeable future, given all the troubles we are having now. Just maybe, if it was a full international effort it could be worth it for the cooperative benefits.