Only 61 NASA Astronauts Left, More Needed Report Says
- Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:04pm by
Liz Klimas
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If you remember the photos taken by Neil DeCosta a couple months ago depicting astronaut suicide’s, it was implied that after NASA discontinued its human flight program earlier this year that astronauts would have nothing to live for — nothing to do. But a recent a report from the National Research Council says this isn’t the case: we need astronauts now more than ever.
Fox News has more:
Over the years, the number of astronauts employed by NASA has clearly been downgraded — from about 150 in 1999 to 61 in 2011. And after several meetings with NASA representatives, former shuttle pilots and mission specialists, and representatives from private space companies, the NRC warns that 61 astronauts may not be enough.
We need new astronauts more than ever, it argues.
“The shuttle program was only one requirement for astronauts,” Joe Rothenberg, one of the co-chairs for the report, told FoxNews.com. “The most obvious one now is to continue operating the International Space Station. We have a partnership with the Russian Federal Space Agency, the European Space Agency and the others that developed it, and we have a commitment to operate it until 2020, staffing it with qualified astronauts to do research.”
In addition to maintaining the ISS, the report listed other jobs for which astronauts are needed, including the development of the next generation of human space flight vehicles. Whether it be for NASA’s Orion Space Capsule or commercial space flight vehicles developed by private companies like SpaceX, astronauts will need to be involved in both the development and operation of these vehicles.
Drafters of the NRC report met with NASA and other space agencies to determine a minimum number of astronauts needed to continue supporting NASA’s program. According to Fox News, NASA found the report “helpful.”
Rothenberg told Fox News that the size of the astronaut corps now isn’t large enough to account for personal accidents, etc., that could prevent astronauts from serving. It takes up to two an a half years to train an astronaut. The infrastructure developed for training astronauts and the investment of having extra astronauts trained is worth maintaining according to Rosenberg. “If we throw [the astronaut corps] away now, the cost would be so prohibitive, we’d stay on the ground forever.”
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Comments (52)
kens
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 9:36amLet me see here. 60 astronauts (some are simply non-pilot strap hangers who conduct Mr. Wizzard Science experiments with grape seeds in space) and no spaceships. Why do we need more? Dick Ruttan and other pioneers who are into privatization of space exploration and travel will find the people with the right stuff. And they won’t be paid with taxpayer money, either. Frankly, I don’t believe we need a bloated NASA astronaut corps with people who take trips into space once a bloody decade.
Report Post »Secret Squirrel
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 10:35am.
Report Post »This is a better gig than working for GM.
Get paid to sit around.
Banana Republic Capitalist
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 3:38pmLOL Great…so now NASA wants “rubber rooms” like the NYC school districts have for their “spare” teachers? Is this the job creation that O’s going to speak about tonight?
Report Post »grayjohn
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 9:04amWhy are astronauts needed when NASA can’t put one in orbit? Obama killed NASA in his effort to kill America. Maybe after the puke in chief is gone we can get back into space. Until then astronauts are a waste of money.
Report Post »tomloy
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 8:35amFor what do we need astronauts? NASA has no manned space program now! The shuttle is gone! If NASA has any money, it should go into a program designed to get cheap access to earth orbit.
Report Post »jkendal
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 8:04amI remember at a tender young age watching the first moon landing and wanting to be an astronaut when I grew up – used to dream about it a lot. Guess I should have stuck with it…..
Report Post »MUDFLAPS
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 8:00amI say send democrats to space and save some money using only half the fuel. Sorry about the return trip, just meditate your dumb a$$ back.
Report Post »poster
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 6:51amLet’s see…. free cell phones for welfare recipients or more astronauts. 20 million democrat votes or 60 possible votes. Tough choice.
Report Post »poster
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 6:48am“If we throw [the astronaut corps] away now, the cost would be so prohibitive, we’d stay on the ground forever.”
And that’s exactly the way Obama wants it. Unless, of course, Maxine Waters is made the head of NASA. Then, you’d see some serious hiring. She’d change the name to NABA – National Association of Black Astronauts.
Report Post »KissMyConservativeValues
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 11:18pmOh, okay… so you need astronauts to help arabs feel good about themselves and their contributions to science? Couldn’t we just give them all a Bill Nye t-shirt?
Report Post »TXPilot
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 11:52pmYes, new astronauts for NASA seems pretty useless, when our spacecraft have been retired, and the whole agency is being transformed into a global warming, politically correct, Muslim outreach think tank……How many more shining examples of Americans former greatness do I have to endure watching be destroyed by the traitors in power?….it’s really starting to get very sad…..
Report Post »LawlessKO
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 9:58pmHow many astronauts does it take to do muslim outreach?
Report Post »johnj1952
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 9:58pmIf odumbo would increase money for manned space flight research maybe more of these brave, smart men and women would try out. Our manned space program stopped when the wheels of the last shuttle touched down. Hey Prez how about more funding for our space program, IT creates JOBS not just in NASA but all the companys needed to produce the eqiupment, testing, instuments and the brains that make the program work.
Report Post »ClockKing
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 9:56pmMaybe some of those astronauts could buck up, and join the PRIVATE enterprises that are developing space travel. Get off the government teat, and let private technology and know-how move us to the next stage.
Report Post »johnj1952
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 11:23pmName any of the PRIVATE ones that have shown any success. We have the infrastructures already in place!
Report Post »junkkyard27
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 7:39amthe company spacex has already tested multiple rockets and a reusable spacecraft. the dragon and it is going to iss in november i think? check out the website http://www.spacex.com they have launch a complex at cape canaveral and one in CA.
Report Post »TomFerrari
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 9:47amPRIVATIZE space exploration.
Don’t believe it can happen?
It already HAS!
Spacex (Space Exploration Technologies) (Elon Musk – founder of PayPal)(Tesla Motors) is developing a manned rocket named Falcon
Charles Walker was already the first non-government astronaut to fly the space shuttle. This was in 1984!
Dennis Tito was ALREADY the first FEE-PAYING space tourist – in 2001 !
In 2004 Scaled Composites (Burt Rutan – now, % Northrop Grumman, won the $10M Ansari X-Prize for flying SEVERAL TIMES into suborbital space.
Space Adventures sent SEVEN people since 2001 on Russian Soyev rockets to the International Space Station.
Budget Suite Hotels (Robert Bigalow) has ALREADY placed foundations for hotels in orbit.
Other companies involved in PRIVATE SPACE TRAVEL include:
Scaled Composites
Northrop Grumman
Boeing
Virgin Galactic
McDonnell Douglas
Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic)
XCOR – commercial space flights beginning in 2012
Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos – think Amazon)
Masten Aerospace
Canadian Arrow
Planet Space
EADS
Report Post »M100Spiral
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 1:02pm@TOMFERRARI
Thank you for taking the time in providing all this information.
Report Post »shirtsbyeric
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 8:38pmOf the 61, how many of them speak Russian?
Report Post »robert
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 9:19pmWhy would NASA need astronauts anyway? I mean Obama told the unqualified blacks he appointed to NASA that his job was to reach out to Muslims.
If he does what the community organizer wants, astronauts won’t be needed at all, unless of course they convert to Islam.
Report Post »OlefromMN
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 7:40pmWe don’t have any spacecraft to send an astronaught to the local 7-11 let alone space. We have plenty of people that can hitchhike a ride on a Russian or ? craft to go to the ISS. I’m not feeling a problem here.
Report Post »wordweaver
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 8:23pmYeah, I don’t buy this as a problem. Once we began designing spacecraft to carry astronauts in the 60s, we went out and recruited astronauts and trained them for the programs that followed. Many applicants came forth. Now that our future path in space is murky at best, I don’t know what we would train astronauts for even if we had some new ones. How are you going to train them them to fly a spacecraft that you don’t have yet? To suggest that once our astronaut corps is gone, it is gone forever is ridiculous. If we build a new spacecraft, they will come.
Report Post »tower7femacamp
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 8:58pmare they all Masons ????
Report Post »blue_sky
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 7:28pmSometimes I like to indulge myself in boasting as I do now. Back in late 90′s I saw an article in NY Times about a young black woman with PhD from Ivy League school suing NASA for not promoting her to a top managerial post. The chirp was – “there is no position, are well educated young women cannot hold” the newspaper and her lawyers claimed.
I said to my black female friend at the time, “It is the end of NASA the same way as Affirmative Action is the end to USA business competitiveness.” She did not talk to me ever since.
Neo-cons are usually afraid to oppose Affirmative action out of fear that their white wives may deny them sex since the latter like those never-ending entitlements as much as non-whites and gays do.
Report Post »BOMUSTGO
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 10:03pmBack in the 60′s my Mom was a secretary at Wright Patterson AFB, Dayton Ohio.She went to school and learned short hand typing, and all the other office skills required for the time.Once affirmative action started, they hired unskilled labor who did not know squat.They had to hire extra skilled people to carry the extra dead weight from the folks they now could not fire.Social justice at its best.
Report Post »Rayblue
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 7:04pmI’ll step up to the plate.
Report Post »The plumber sawed through the electric wires and knocked out the garbage disposal and phone today.
I’m ready for a vacation in a space diaper. Send me to Pluto. I don’t care.
majorsco
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:53pmWhy would this cash strapped country need to spend millions and millions of dollars training astronauts with no space program. For those few that we need, it makes sense, but that’s only about 5 per year, no more. If the civilian companies want astronauts for their future space craft, then they should train them. Obama has led this country to the the situation where we go from leader in space to not having a space presence beyond what the Russians will allow. This is a preview of Obama’s leadership for the economy, as he has the same plans for those of us on the ground!
Report Post »squeaker
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:52pm61 bottles of beer on the wall… take one down pass it around… – 60 bottles of…………..
Report Post »heavyduty
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:29pmI don’t know why we would need any more, seems to me that we are getting out of the space business. If we are then we don’t need them. Let the Russians do it all.
Report Post »CatB
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:38pmYes .. and I am certain that if they do look for more .. it will be part of the “Muslim outreach” at NASA Obama spoke of ..
Report Post »ChiefGeorge
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:39pmThere are plenty of wannabes out in Hollywood, send them up. Seriously, career minded pilots from the services really don’t see being an astronut the best thing for their careers so many are just not that excited to step in that direction. This is what happens when a country turns on its own accomplishments and see’s these achievements something to be ashamed of because it makes so many others feel bad about not being able to meet the rigid requirments. I‘ll bet most kids in college today believe that all they have to do is apply to be a spaceman and they’ll get the job. How about 15 years in the seat of a high performance jet, a stellar reputation and a desire to excel further in space exploration.
Report Post »blue_sky
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:41pmCORRECT! If trade unions at NASA and its contractors dragged their work and inspections to the point each shuttle launch cost $1.6B (while free market price is only $50M), it is a service to our taxpayers to cut on wasting spending. Buy similar service and scientific data from overseas until our workers improve their productivity and work ethics to match those of competitors.
Report Post »BSdetector
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:48pmNono we need them to fight the Evil Space Aliens that are going to eat us if we don’t put a halt to all this man made global warning!!!
Report Post »And to put out fantasy stories about how evil space aliens are going to eat us if we don’t stop all this man made global warming.
Oh and also to make muSlimes feel good about themselves.
bioengineer
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:24pmWhy would anybody want to join NASA? For a really long time I was super-interested in this career path, and then as I got older I started to realize that they weren’t really doing science but playing politics. I remember when Story Musgrave, a huge inspiration to me, came out publicly against NASA for this very reason. You’ve got school teachers flying into space, people with degrees in education and liberal arts, yada, yada. Diversity is great, but NASA astronauts just aren’t what they used to be. They aren’t explorers. They’re quasi-technicians performing mostly stupid experiments that come in kits provided to them by government-subsidized corporate and academic sponsors. Anybody truly interesed in space bailed on NASA a long time ago. They work for SpaceX or compete in the X-prize. You have a much better chance of being a real astronaut in the private sector or even as a back-yard hobbyist than at NASA.
Report Post »9111315
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 8:55pmWe are back to “Monkeys did it first.”
Report Post »Whimcycle
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 2:34amActually dogs did it first… just saying.
Report Post »Dabldo
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 11:26pmHey Bioeng. NASA still manages to do some serious science. Accidentally, on the way, in between the political rain drops. AAAhhh i remember the good old days. Where the only politics was beating the Russians to the moon. Not affirmative action and dozens other things they have wedged in there.
Report Post »JUSTANOTHEROPINION
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:23pmIf it wasn’t for us flying out into space the democrats would have never noticed us here on earth and we would not be plagued with them now.
Report Post »santramir
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:20pm… american way collapsing due to what?? oh yea to much talmudic ideology in its laws and society.
Report Post »Servant Of YHVH
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 7:07pmIt’s a shame that you are not as smart as you think you are. Haven’t you realized by now that it is the liberal wackos (including ones pretending to be conservatives) posting on conservative sites that is the reason for the destruction of the world? They are the ones known for shutting everything down because the conservatives don’t bow down and worship them. They are the blight of the earth.
Report Post »EqualJustice
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:16pmThe PRIVATE sector does NOT include the Euopean or Russian governments! We will now pay our TAX DOLLARS TO THEM INSTEAD? Ridiculous!
Report Post »Teaparty-grammy
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 7:01pmWhat happens when the Hubble telescope, the space station, etc. need repairs? I guess we’ll have to stand by the side of the road with our thumbs out, hoping the Russians or Chinese will pick us up on their way into outer space, or pay them a gazillion dollars to do the repairs for us. Yeah . . . that is MUCH better, isn’t it!
Report Post »The-Monk
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 8:03pmIn the wake of a Russian rocket failure, NASA is considering evacuating the crew of the International Space Station later this year. The unprecedented move would mark the first time in more than 10 years that the orbiting outpost has gone unmanned.
Report Post »http://www.space.com/12772-nasa-space-station-crew-evacuation-plan.html
EqualJustice
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:14pmWHY would any American want to fly on a RUSSIAN spacecraft of ANY KIND? Send your own people up there in your SUB STANDARD equipment.
Report Post »westy98530
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 8:54pmOnly 4 people have ever died in a russian space mission, compared to the 14 that have died in shuttle accidents (2 fatal accidents per program). The last fatal russian accident was in the 70s. Our last one was in 2003. Soyuz rockets, even with the recent mishaps, are still the most commonly used and most reliable launch vehicles in the world. Say what you want about Russian rockets, but they are not deathtraps. I’d fly one tomorrow if given the chance.
Report Post »BOMUSTGO
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:08pmObama can now pronounce it as ‘astronaut Corps” because he killed NASA.
Report Post »LadyIzShy
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:06pmumm not that I am against NASA but we are no longer flying to space and even when we did it cost TOO Much let the PRIVATE sector do this
Report Post »Exrepublisheep
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 6:21pmAgreed. Everyone wants to decrease spending of the other guys projects only.
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