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Astronauts

Ignoring Those Who Took The Risks Once They Leave

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 4, 2014
Filed under

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

15 responses to “Ignoring Those Who Took The Risks Once They Leave”

  1. Todd Austin says:
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    How do they possibly justify this? Is anyone at NASA willing to go on the record to take responsibility for treating astronauts in this way?

    • KeCo says:
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      Frankly, I’d rather see NASA put more of its funds towards education rather than providing free prints to ex-astronauts. Of course he doesn’t mention what he is planning to do with those photos. From what I understand Clay Anderson is a pretty good guy – if it is for some educational presentation then yes NASA should try to help. After all it is free publicity for them and their programs.

      • kcowing says:
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        Have you bothered to follow his Twitter feed? He’s constantly doing space (NASA) related education and public outreach. NASA has supported such efforts for decades.

    • charliexmurphy says:
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      Why should astronauts be treated any differently from other workers. If a former MCC or KSC worker wanted some pics of themselves that PAO had taken, do you think they would get the free photos?

      • kcowing says:
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        Have you bothered to follow his Twitter feed? He is constantly doing space (NASA) related education and public outreach. NASA has supported such efforts for decades.

  2. Spacetech says:
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    The bottom line is that ordering any kind of official NASA photos has to be requested for and paid by an NASA task order, org code and cost center just like everything else that is purchased at NASA. If the requestor (Anderson) no longer works for the agency its no different than joe public asking NASA for pictures. All of this courtesy of full cost accounting!
    One would think that he still has some contacts in the Astronaut office whom he could ask to order photos?

    • KeCo says:
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      I don’t think this is all that good of evidence that NASA is mistreating its ex-astronauts. After all, fairly high res images of most astronauts can be downloaded on the internet.

    • kcowing says:
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      Your response borders on ignorance. Have you bothered to follow his Twitter feed? He’s constantly doing space (NASA) related education and public outreach. NASA has supported such efforts for decades.

    • Todd Austin says:
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      The process you describe gets right at the heart of what ails NASA. A simple request for images by an astronaut doing NASA-related education and outreach work can be satisfied only if you can get “orders – signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.”*

      NASA – now run by Vogons.

      (*”The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, Douglas Adams)

    • cb450sc says:
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      From the tweet, it wasn’t clear that he was asking for physical prints. I am guessing he wants the full-resolution original image files. And yes, I totally would expect those to be provided for the cost of a tarball.

  3. Michael Spencer says:
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    It’s about the same way we treat our veterans. “Thanks for your service!” is pretty hollow.

  4. Dewey Vanderhoff says:
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    Going forward, the incursion by Russia into Crimea might be the best thing that ever happened to US manned spaceflight since the shuttle retirement. Dim bulbs are brightening along the Potomac.

    Don’t f@#k it up, NASA.

  5. Manial says:
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    I am flabergasted by this.

  6. Astro Clay says:
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    I asked for the photo in HiRES format to include in my book, The Ordinary Spaceman. I already had it in jpeg format. That’s all. No cost to govt or taxpayer… just a few seconds of their time as I provided the image number as I would do for any photo. This one was NR (restricted), because I had boxer shorts on my head. THEY felt it wasn’t an appropriate photo.