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Old June 13th 07, 05:39 AM posted to sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.policy
Charles Buckley
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Default Maximum Rate Shuttle Launches

Jeff Findley wrote:
"Charles Buckley" wrote in message
...
Henry Spencer wrote:
In article .com,
This has two big problems. First, it would greatly reduce the power of
Astronaut Office management, by taking a lot of the suspense and mystery
out of crew selection. And second, the astronauts hate having to let
non-astronauts into their flying clubhouses.

And even beyond those horrors would be a non-degreed warrant officer
from the US army flying as a payload specialist. What's the point
in 4 BS degrees, 3 MS degrees, and 2 PhD's on the resume then?


Obviously there's not any point in this. The current batch of astronauts
are, in general, vastly over qualified. For example, you don't need all
those degress to "fly" the RMS. Commercial crane operators arguably have
much the same job requirements, and often lift extremely expensive pieces of
hardware, but you'd be hard pressed to find people doing those jobs who have
multiple MS degrees and/or PhD's.


I know. I just used an actual specific example of Thomas J. Hennen.

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/PS/hennen.html

As near as I can tell, this was about the smartest personel decision
ever to fly on Shuttle. They took someone from the end customer support
who was familiar with the technology. Fed him into the payload
development side of things so he was very familiar with the payload.
Then, about a year before he flew, he reported to NASA for flight and
shuttle training. I don't think NASA had any choice on this guy, at
all. He was specified by the DoD.