Former Navy soccer star named part of astronaut team for manned space flights

capitalgazette.com ^

[BenLurkin]

A former Naval Academy soccer star who led her squad to an undefeated league season has been named to another team that goes above and beyond.

NASA announced Friday that it had assigned Marine Corps Lt. Col. Nicole Mann to a new crew of astronauts who will fly a privately developed spaceship, marking a return of U.S.-manned space flight after the shuttle program ended in 2011. Since then, Americans have relied on Russian spacecraft for space travel.

Mann will be a part of a three-person crew to fly Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on a mid-2019 mission, the spacecraft’s first manned flight. NASA said in a tweet that the astronauts will launch from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to the International Space Station. The Starliner will dock and undock with the station before returning to Earth.

Mann, an NCAA Academic All-American on the academy’s soccer team, was commissioned to the Marine Corps in 1999, earned a master’s degree in engineering from Stanford University and flew F/A-18 Hornets. She deployed twice on the now-decommissioned aircraft carrier Enterprise and flew missions in Operation Iraqi Freedom. She later joined one of the Navy’s test pilot squadrons, a common assignment for aspiring astronauts. NASA selected her for astronaut training in June 2013.

[precisionshootist]

Clicked over and read the article. On the same page it shows four of the new NASA astronauts. Two are male and two are female. Does anybody think that just happened to be a coincidence that of four of the most qualified people we have two are men and two are women? Call me skeptical.

If we did it all over again today starting from scratch how many of the "Mercury" astronauts would be female?

IMO if we had to do it all over again today starting from scratch we would fail miserably. Quite simply we would have never landed on the Moon if we had the type of PC thinking that we have today. Don't believe me, just take a tour of mission control in Houston. The men that entered that room were there because they were the smartest men in the room. They were the smartest men in any room and you did not gain entrance because you were female or black or white or muslim or any other such nonsense. You got in that room by being the very best of the best and 110% committed to the supreme success of the United States Of America.

The article states she was a fighter pilot. Good grief what are we thinking?

[iowamark]

Nine astronauts selected, only two are women.

https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-announcement-astronaut-crew-spacex-boeing-selection-2018-8#the-space-agency-hasnt-confirmed-precise-launch-dates-for-any-of-the-four-crewed-missions-which-are-about-two-years-behind-schedule-13

[precisionshootist]

I checked out the link. looks like a very PC operation to me. I hate to sound so pessimistic but I just don't think we have it anymore. We don't have the guts and honesty to face the cold facts of reality. Everyone does not get a trophy, particularly in space exploration.

I'm really just speaking to the PC aspect of our society not specifically the space program or non space program whatever it is these days.

Ultimately we will have to have many women go into space but we are nowhere near that point. Only 12 people in human history have set foot on the moon and no one is even close to be the 13th.