Re: South Korean Astronaut has severe back pain after rough landing

On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:20:13 GMT, Fevric J Glandules
<fevric@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:30:55 +0000, Alan Erskine wrote:

"M" <otakenji@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:70fcb868-b095-4218-b7e4-2893762dcdb2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
South Korea's first astronaut Yi So-Yeon has been admitted to hospital
with severe back pains caused by her rough return voyage to Earth,
officials said Tuesday.

So the landing was pretty rough, even with a nominal retrorocket burn
and nominal parachute

Let the law suits begin.

Which reminds me - is it still true that astronauts can't get life
insurance? I believe that was true in the 60s. I may have picked
this up from watching FTETTM or some such other reputable source...

The NASA astronauts (not active members of the military or seconded
from another country) have the same kind of life insurance Dryden
research test pilots and every other civilian employee of the
government has. It's called FEGLI, Federal Employees Group Life
Insurance. It wasn't new in 1962, when my husband elected it when he
hired on at Dryden. The military astronauts have SGLI, Servicemember
Group Life Insurance, as do all other member of the military.

I shouldn't say they all have this, as it's optional. It's just cheap
term life insurance. There is also a NASA employee's association that
offers insurance, mostly for dependents. It, too, is optional.

In addition, the family of anyone who dies on duty gets a nice
tax-free annuity. Spouses get it for life or until remarriage and
children get it until they're 18 or, maybe, until they're out of
college.

Mary "Retirees have it, too, if they keep paying"
--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer
We didn't just do weird stuff at Dryden, we wrote reports about it.
reunite.gondwana@xxxxxxxxx or miliff@xxxxxxxx
Visit my blog at http://thedigitalknitter.blogspot.com/
.