Rocket Scientist

One of the things that really matters to me is the sometimes elusive capability of critical thinking and honest evaluation.  I’m somewhat relieved whenever I go to the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety because I’m not an oddity there. There are people from around the world dedicated to the notion of safety being an integral, critical part of space exploration, devoted to the idea that there are no acceptable losses.  You may be thinking, that’s crazy!  Yeah, well, I love these people.  We speak the same language no matter what language we’re speaking.
IAASS actively works to build understanding, to wrestle out international standards, to ensure accidents that can be avoided are, well, avoided, and we learn from past mistakes.  Professional after professional explains tools, often underfunded or figured out on their own, they’re developing to get a better handle on risks, to identify concerns, to find solutions.  They explain things that worked and things that didn’t so we can learn from them.
They’re not looking for scapegoats or pretending it was all good; you can’t learn if you aren’t honest about what happened.  History that is ignored will be repeated.
So, the conference was good.  The people, exceptional.  But I was still embarrassed at one point.  See, the paper presented was on international space law and how, without international agreements, it was still pretty much a free for all with nothing to prevent one country’s action from having huge impacts (literally and figuratively) on the space assets and actual populace of another country.  After the presentation, cut short due to time constraints, the presenter was discussing the topic with a former cosmonaut now working for Energia (probably Russia’s most important space contractor responsible for building the Soyuz rockets).  He explained that, when the Shuttle was first making trips to the Mir Space Station, some cosmonauts and astronauts would fly up on a Soyuz, but come back down on the Shuttle.  Russian cosmonauts, when they arrived on the ground were immediately arrested as illegal aliens before, even though their return to earth had been coordinated on both sides.
I was appalled and embarrassed, ashamed that we had ever acted so thoughtlessly.  The former cosmonaut said he was unsure if Russia had behaved any better and also that Russia and the US now had an agreement that precluded this reaction, but it really made me think.  Why can’t people think critically and do the right thing, use logic and/or common sense?  It’s something I stress in my fiction and something I’d like to see more of in real life.
How about you?

P.S. Kudos to India for joining in the lunar space fraternity with their recent launch last week.

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