Authenticity and space history

Yesterday, I saw an article on LinkedIn, about the strangest interview question they had ever heard. The interviewer actually asked her, "How do I know you're not lying?"

Is that, actually, a thing people do? Lie, in a job interview? It doesn't seem like the route to a good career.

But I have to admit, when I was a Freshman looking for cooperative education opportunities, it felt like I had to prove why I went into Electrical Engineering, if I really was interested in Aerospace? For that matter, why Engineering and not, say, Astrophysics?

I've discussed my reasons in the past (I'll add trackback links later.)

With time on my hands, I've been reading and reflecting. That's also meant looking through old scrapbooks. In an era of "pics of it didn't happen," here's a handful of photos:

Settling the Solar System

This week I've been touching on last week's Twitter conversation about the Narrative of Mars Colonization, based on this episode of Star Talk Radio: The Future of Humanity with Elon Musk.

It is interesting that Dr. D.N. Lee picked up on the problems of framing the discussion with phrases like "stuck on Earth", "save humanity", and "Manifest Destiny." The Storify of her discussion is here.

When I listened to the podcast, what I picked up on was the discussion about education of women as a means to reduce population growth. As I table that topic for a later discussion, let me just drop this link describing the concept of Reproductive Justice.

Yesterday I posted links to books and other resources discussing NASA culture. This morning I updated it with a few more items.

The first 7 astronauts were selected from U.S. military test pilots. This automatically excluded women, because even though women had been serving in combat since before 1776,  been pilots since 1908 (not just white women, Bessie Coleman earned her pilots license in 1922), and flown military aircraft since 1942, including as test pilots (if not earlier, since many of the barnstorming aircraft were WWI surplus), the first woman selected for military Test Pilot School happened in 1982.

The questions I see are:

Astronauts at Purdue

This weekend was very hectic.  Worried about storms, trying to write, catching "8" on YouTube (not live).  

I'm working on the Annual Budget Drive at my church, and we're doing testimonials each Sunday.  The people we were trying to reach for yesterday's service weren't going to be ready in time, so I gave my testimonial.  Writing a 1-minute speech about what my church means to me and why I contribute to it... was difficult.  That sort of "from-the-heart" discussion is one that I usually prefer to improvise, since that seems to work for me.  But I need to provide the transcripts for the newsletter, and I can't do that with an improvised speech.  So I had to write it.

Anyway.  I promised to tell the story of performing for Neil Armstrong.  One of our first performances in the marching band happened on a Thursday afternoon, when we would normally be at rehearsal.  Purdue had just finished a capital campaign, called Vision 21.  The co-chairs of that effort were Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, the first and last men to have walked on the moon.  Both were supposed to be at this outdoor event on campus.  Later that evening / weekend there would be a big fancy dinner with the jazz band, but the $75 tickets were well beyond my student means.