Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!uunet!mitel!sce!cognos!geovision!alastair
From: alastair@geovision.uucp (Alastair Mayer)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: NASA Bureaucracy - it's for the birds
Keywords: astronaut qualifications
Message-ID: <528@geovision.UUCP>
Date: 27 Jan 89 16:00:02 GMT
References: <15855@genrad.UUCP> <24128@amdcad.AMD.COM> <1896@egvideo.uucp> <24177@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Reply-To: alastair@geovision.UUCP (Alastair Mayer)
Organization: GeoVision Corp, Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 25

Boy, some people are dense, or have warped sense of humor.

The POINT, as a couple of people tried to clarify, is that NASA
will look at a candidate with 0yrs exp + BS + 3yrs exp (in *that* order),
but will NOT look at a candiate with >3yrs exp + BS + ? exp (in that order),
even if the ">3" is 10.   Even if the experience prior to the BS
is highly relevant to the position applied for.

Sure, such a candidate may have a better chance after 3 yrs has elapsed
than someone with 0 prior-to-BS experience, and sure, NASA can set any
silly requirements they want.  But that wasn't the point.

Perhaps the best bet for the person in question is to get a job with
a company likely to be sponsoring payloads, and campaign like hell to
become the payload specialist.  After all, Charlie Walker - who worked
for McDonnel-Douglas, *not* NASA - got 3 or 4 shuttle flights - more
than most NASA astronauts.

The best bet for the rest of us is to get some other active players
into the space passenger biz - or find $10 million for a Soyuz ride.
-- 
"The problem is not that spaceflight is expensive,  | Alastair J.W. Mayer
therefore only the government can do it, but that   | alastair@geovision.UUCP
only the government is doing spaceflight, therefore | al@BIX
it is expensive."                                   |