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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: space news from Nov 12 AW&ST
Message-ID: <1990Dec15.234718.9508@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1990Dec12.044442.2101@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Dec14.051844.3830@cimage.com>
Date: Sat, 15 Dec 90 23:47:18 GMT

In article <1990Dec14.051844.3830@cimage.com> gregc@dgsi.UUCP (Greg Cronau/10000) writes:
>While John Young still has the official title of "Astronaut", I believe he has
>removed himself from the active flight rotation schedule. I have not heard
>why he made this decision.

I'd guess that he has little or no chance of flying again.  He lost his
position as chief astronaut after some injudicious remarks in print about
lack of astronaut involvement in decision making.  Who gets to fly is a
matter of office politics first and technical qualifications second.

(The reason why his remarks were injudicious, by the way, is that the lack
of astronaut involvement was considered mostly his fault.  Astronauts have
busy schedules, and anything that the boss doesn't consider important tends
to fall off the bottom of the list.  Young's predecessor insisted on, and
got, astronaut involvement; Young didn't.)
-- 
"The average pointer, statistically,    |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry