Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ucbcad.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!ucbcad!notes
From: notes@ucbcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Medals for cosmonauts - (nf)
Message-ID: <948@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-Dec-83 07:55:31 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.948
Posted: Fri Dec  2 07:55:31 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Dec-83 09:06:56 EST
Sender: notes@ucbcad.UUCP
Organization: UC Berkeley CAD Group
Lines: 32

#R:sri-arpa:-1412400:ucbesvax:8700009:000:1431
ucbesvax!turner    Dec  2 02:57:00 1983

Re: medals for cosmonauts, what for astronauts

This is conjecture, but I think the reason that U.S. astronauts aren't
routinely decorated the way cosmonauts are has to do with attitudes
toward militarization.  May Day parades in Red Square are ominously
symmetrical: military honchos on one side of the podium, politburo flacks
on the other.  You don't see much of that here--I think there's even a
law that says that the President shall not appear in uniform, even as
commander in chief.

In the USSR, nuclear fuel and waste shipments travel under guard by
Red Army convoys.  In the U.S., even the nuclear *weapons* industry
has always (ostensibly) been a civilian outfit.  (Back when Reagan
still dreamed of axing DoE, it was thought that the nuclear weapons
programs could be transferred to the Department of Commerce.)

Perhaps the inception of the Soviet space program was marked by cooperation
among the (less divided?) branches of their military.  Here, NASA was
formed, in part, out of exasperation with the infighting, secretiveness,
and competition between branches of the armed forces who were trying to
outdo each other's space programs.  Perhaps our more civilian
administration was loathe to decide which 4-star general would do the
pinning of the medal, and simply discouraged the practice, even though
the astronauts were themselves military men.

Conjecture, as I say.
---
Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)