Former NASA doctor says agency must do more

msnbc ^ | 2/09/06 | James Oberg

[Mamzelle]

...."Veteran NASA flight surgeon and professional psychiatrist Patricia Santy worked at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston from 1984 to 1991, eventually becoming flight surgeon, or flight doctor, at Mission Control Center. She also is a board-certified psychiatrist, and helped develop psychiatric standards used to assess astronaut applicants in that period. She literally wrote the book on the physiological analysis involved in choosing space flyers titled "Choosing the Right Stuff: The Psychological Selection of Astronauts and Cosmonauts." She is widely regarded as a leading authority on the psychology of human spaceflight."...

[Mamzelle]

Interesting because Oberg (considered an astronaut/NASA insider, especially by himself) authored this, and it's not flattering either to NASA or to the astronaut club. That a flight surgeon is allowed to have her say about dealing with astronauts is also of note.

[Jake The Goose]

How just shutting down the cold war budget hog.

Shut Nasa down, sell the assets to the public sector - and let the new space era begin.

Can anyone name one this the "International Space Station" has achieved?

Anyone?

[Jake The Goose]

Wow my typing is awful today !!!

[NonValueAdded]

“NASA won't even launch the shuttle if a screw is out of place in its hardware,” [Santy] said.

Interesting choice of words for the implied similie. A screw loose in the crew, indeed! Also, an almost eponymous name for a pshrink. "There's no 'I' in Santy."

[Mamzelle]

Amazon book review..For the first time the history of the psychological and psychiatric evaluation of astronaut and cosmonaut candidates is detailed. The general public and many professionals assume that psychological issues have been and will be extremely important factors in successful space exploration. This book, however, documents how NASA underutilized, downplayed, then ultimately ignored psychiatric and psychological characteristics in selecting astronauts, until very recently.

[Yo-Yo]

She sounds like a modern-day Dr. Bellows.

[Dallas59]