Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "" video.

Space has had a certain level of cringe since Alan Shepard peed in his suit while waiting on the launch pad. If that's not enough then go read Michael Collins book "Carrying the Fire" and when you get to where he talks about the "steel eel" you'll redefine what cringe is. And if that is not enough then go an look up what happened on Apollo-7 the mission NOBODY at NASA wants to talk about. It was also the mission that lead to the policy of deliberately constipating astronauts so they wouldn't repeat Apollo-7.
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Aerospace engineer here - That's actually not unreasonable. However there were people on this flight who were qualified and are aerospace engineers. I don't think its fair to call them tourists. I'm Australian but did my degree in America. I hoped at the time to become Australia's first astronaut. That ended early in my first semester in America when Australian born Paul Scully-Power flew on STS-41-G in October 1984. If you look at his Wikipedia page it says "astronaut" but for many years NASA did not credit him as an astronaut but as a "mission specialist" because he was NOT employed by NASA. Do you think that its unfair NOT to call him an astronaut despite flying in orbit for over 8 days? YES - there is a problem with designating who is and who is NOT an astronaut and its been around for 40+years.
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@SubTroppo To put it mildly it was the first 3 man crewed mission and it was longer than any previous flight. Plus it was before they had worked out how to feed astronauts to prevent the need to #2 for a week or more. And they just hadn't worked out how to go in space. Hence the near mutiny
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Aerospace engineer here - That's actually not unreasonable. However there were people on this flight who were qualified and are aerospace engineers. I don't think its fair to call them tourists. I'm Australian but did my degree in America. I hoped at the time to become Australia's first astronaut. That ended early in my first semester in America when Australian born Paul Scully-Power flew on STS-41-G in October 1984. If you look at his Wikipedia page it says "astronaut" but for many years NASA did not credit him as an astronaut but as a "mission specialist" because he was NOT employed by NASA. Do you think that its unfair NOT to call him an astronaut despite flying in orbit for over 8 days? YES - there is a problem with designating who is and who is NOT an astronaut and its been around for 40+years.
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He walked on the moon too. gus Grissom who also only did a suborbital flight during the Mercury program also flew a Gemini mission.
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Aerospace engineer here - your comment is not unreasonable. However there were people on this flight who were qualified and are aerospace engineers. I don't think its fair to call them tourists. I'm Australian but did my degree in America. I hoped at the time to become Australia's first astronaut. That ended early in my first semester in America when Australian born Paul Scully-Power flew on STS-41-G in October 1984. If you look at his Wikipedia page it says "astronaut" but for many years NASA did not credit him as an astronaut but as a "mission specialist" because he was NOT employed by NASA. Do you think that its unfair NOT to call him an astronaut despite flying in orbit for over 8 days? YES - there is a problem with designating who is and who is NOT an astronaut and its been around for 40+years.
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@ProfessorOzone Yeah but I just wanted people to know that NASA has had its cringe factor for decades. Space has never been easy and that's meant some fairly cringe parts to the whole thing. I saw a talk (and it might be here on YT) given by a NASA person on the whole history of going to the toilet in space. Its about 30 minutes of cringe and part of the reason they don't hide it is because real astronauts have to deal with it and its better they deal with it upfront rather than after a couple of years of training. But you and others are right this is another type of cringe. Who knew cringe came in different flavors!
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@odysseusrex5908 Yes I know the terminology AND SORRY BUT NASA had Paul Scully-Power listed as a "mission specialist" NOT an Astronaut. I know this because I actually spoke to NASA ~20years ago. Every 2 years NASA has an intake of 20 for the next Astronaut class. I applied to one and YES I knew I was ineligible being Australian. What I asked them for was a note saying that YES I was ineligible BUIT WAS QUALIFIED. All I got back was "Sorry you not American" so I called their Astronaut office. I told them what I was trying to was get NASA to add to the astronaut class foreign nationals paid for by the country. They told me they were not interested. The crazy thing is they now do EXACTLY what I proposed. The most recent astronaut class has 20 Americans and 8 foreign nationals. There was not an Australian in the class which intensely angers me considering I was the person who tried to get NASA to do this. In that conversation I had with NASA I brought up the fact that 3 Australians had been in the US program Phillip Chapman during the Apollo era, Paul Scully-Power and Andy Thomas and THEY TOLD ME they did not consider Paul Scully-Power an astronaut. YES - NASA actually told me that.
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@williamerazo3921 Have you seen the documentary "In the Shadow of the Moon"? it was done by the crew who did Apollo 13 because they had access to the surviving Apollo astronauts. First you need to realise ALL OF THEM were degree qualified engineers with most having masters and a couple PhDs. So they knew good and bad engineering. When they talked about Apollo 1 one of them recounted how he pointed out the dreadful state of the wiring in the Apollo 1 capsule to Gus Grissom and they asked Gus why he didn't say anything and Gus replied words to the effect of "I'll lose my job." So they all knew there was a risk, but what none of them counted on was what would happen if there was a spark in a pure oxygen atmosphere at 14lbs pressure. You see they all looked at what would be going on in space where the cabin pressure was much lower but because the test was at sea level the pressure was equal to the outside atmospheric pressure. So the amount of oxygen present was much higher and with the amount of magnesium-aluminum alloys present it just went off. When you watch those guys recount it you can see the sadness in their eyes.
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@E-d1d3 I'm an aerospace engineer and that's the best comment so far.
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@TNH91 I think that's a very good way to put it. I think its fair to give these people their astronauts wings because they have flown above the Kármán line or at least give them something to recognise they did fly on a rocket above 100km But you point is VALID. They can't call themselves astronauts because they were passengers NOT CREW.
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