Re: Excess astronauts -- what must be done

From: Jim Oberg (jameseoberg_at_houston.rr.com)
Date: 03/08/05 

Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 15:28:25 GMT

Overarching theme: contrary to the impression you might get
from Astronaut Office folks, nobody owes them a space flight.

They are assigned flights in order to best perform national
goals, not to be 'fair' to those candidates in training.

The notion that they might just file lawsuits to get flights
they claim they deserve just shows how sick the culture
has gotten.

"Paul Blay" <ranma@saotome.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:d0jtuc$819$1$830fa17d@news.demon.co.uk...
> "Brian Gaff" wrote ...
> > I don't know about your laws re age discrimination etc, but I'd suspect
> > doing as you suggest may well not be legally possible. They will point
to
> > the fact that people are staying fitter longer and tell you to go away!
>
> I believe there's a lot of controversy about mandatory retirement ages for
> commercial pilots.
>
> Two things:-
>
> 1. Some things do get worse when you get older (although when, what
> and how much varies).
> 2. Retirement is _not_ based on an objective assessment of the individual
> pilot's actual condition/ability. (In fact I think there is some fudge
relating to
> pensions that means a bunch of them will be able to work for five more
> years than the rest).
>
> I would hope policy for astronauts will be rather better - although I'm
not
> holding out much hope.