Astronaut natural wastage?

I was just thinking that as long duration will be the only game in town if
you want to fly, assuming no 11th hour change of heart, will we see a rather
large exodus of astronauts soon? I notice Heidi and a couple of others
already went, whether because they knew they were unsuitable for long
duration or just did not fancy it, which I guess amounts to the same thing.

I also suspect that some of the astornauts do get addicted to being able to
fly, I'm sure the shrinks have a word for this!

It will be interesting to see what happens.

Brian

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Brian Gaff wrote:
I was just thinking that as long duration will be the only game in town if
you want to fly, assuming no 11th hour change of heart, will we see a rather
large exodus of astronauts soon?


With 2 flights per year, 2 US passengers per flight, that doesn't
require a large group of astronauts.

I suspect NASA will want o retain a small group of experienced shuttle
astronauts to help define "man rated" and work with potential commercial
manned space projects or help restart a NASA manned space programme
later on.

There will also still be a need for astronauts to be trained for the US
segment of the ISS (and that group will need to train russian, european
and canadian astronauts who plan to gosub the ISS and be allowed to
enter the US segmemt.

I wonder if NASA will make public its plans for the astronaut corps.
(How many will be retained as astronauts, how mamy will be transfered to
other parts of NASA and how many will be offered early retirememt and/or
sent back to the military.

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
...
I was just thinking that as long duration will be the only game in town if
you want to fly, assuming no 11th hour change of heart, will we see a
rather large exodus of astronauts soon? I notice Heidi and a couple of
others already went, whether because they knew they were unsuitable for
long duration or just did not fancy it, which I guess amounts to the same
thing.

I also suspect that some of the astornauts do get addicted to being able
to fly, I'm sure the shrinks have a word for this!

It will be interesting to see what happens.

If you check your history, you'll note that quite a few of the Apollo era
astronauts (selected after the groups which got to fly lunar missions) left
in the 70's when it became obvious that there would be precious few flights
until the shuttle started flying (only 9 slots for Skylab missions and 3
slots for ASTP).

NASA has a glut of astronauts anyway. They are a "resource" whose supply is
greater than the demand.

Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon