FWIS3

Watched the latest launch of a Dragon carrying 4 astronauts to the ISS a couple nights ago. It's happening, the public/private partnership with commercial companies stepping up and continuing the space program. Seeing all that is amazing and encouraging, especially with all the cameras these days we get to see hi res video real time of the activities. Especially seeing the boosters return obediently to the launch pad or drone ship, frickin amazing.
However, I think I'm showing my age, or bias and I'm a little embarrassed. We see the inside of the capsule that looks like a gamer's competition with all the touch screens, the goofy space suits, the gen Xers in tank tops and flip flops at the consoles cheering and doing raucous hive fives at the announcement of every launch "milestone."
Silly me keeps thinking one little power glitch or other and the touch screens go down. You need real mechanical switches and relays that the astronauts can access real time in case of major malfunctions. And the controllers, they should all be wearing black trousers, white shirts with pocket protectors, and black skinny ties and big dark rimmed glasses. And they only show any emotion at splashdown when they bring out the big cigars.
Seriously, I know it's amazing and it's progress, but the way it's presented on NASA TV with five different hosts hyping it up and most of the capcom to crew communications clearly scripted. Isn't it exciting enough? We are putting people in space! It's a shame they feel the need to artificially make it more "exciting." I think it says more about the audience. Rommie's post about first contact scenarios made me think of this I guess.

I mean if the power goes out on your touch screen I think they have other problems. (I mean, I think it'd be pretty damn tough if that happened in a plane these days too, which is far easier to land in an emergency than a space craft!)

I am of two minds on this. On the one hand I agree that people take it too far, like the hero worship of Elon Musk makes me rather uncomfortable. On the other, well, the old approach was kind of not well done- there is literally a Simpsons episode from the 90s where the premise is that space launches are boring (and thus Homer goes to space), and I don't think that was completely untrue. Should it be enough, sure, but I'm told in astro you should spend like 50% of your time selling yourself if you want to be a successful researcher (a percent people will argue over, but you get the point). All our commercial products have marketing, and while it's laudable to think this shouldn't I just don't think that's realistic.

My Close Personal Friend, Astronaut Josh Cassada, is part of the Commercial Crew program. He was unluckily assigned to Boeing Starliner. But all Boeing crew were just reassigned to SpaceX given Boeing's woes, so he'll be flying to ISS on Crew 5 next fall! For me it's still about the amazement that people are going to space. I don't really pay attention to what the capsule looks like as long as it works. Frankly, I was impressed with the way the first SpaceX crew launch was covered in May 2020. NASA TV is so boring--you can tell they have to follow a government approved script. I liked seeing a different way that launches can be shown.

Yeah, I think also TBH it's the unfortunate thing that you just are allowed more leeway in a lot of this stuff if you're a commercial company over a government entity. Government gets in trouble if even a little bit of money is spent on pizazz!

I get it, if you don't sell yourself than who will? And in this time with all kinds of noise coming from everywhere, you have to be wise to get your horn tooting noticed. Like I said, I am a bit embarrassed to be a curmudgeon. I was excited to watch the launch and read about the docking. I saw a quick video when the new crew was hugging the current crew of the ISS. I almost teared up. If you understand what all it took to get to that point, you know why there were emotional hugs.
But I get fired up watching un commentary'd videos of carrier flight deck operations. That they can pull that shit off day after day is amazing.