And they're going to operate their phones with spacesuit gloves on? They're going to do EVAs clutching their precious phone? NASA is allowing regular consumer-grade items into space when each launch is going to cost billions of dollars?

Seriously?

I'm sorry, this is one of the most daft ideas I've heard in a long time.

Thanks for the civility.

Interestingly, she was not heartbroken. Disappointed, yes. Astronauts (at least the ones I've met) and those who get close are incredibly resilient people. She ended up working in a company that builds experiments that fly on the ISS, on contract for the scientists who want to run them. Part of her job was astronaut liaison.

NASA's medical examination is far, far more involved than anything a civilian will ever experience. They examine every part of your body, as intensively as technology will allow. They found her anomalous condition in a part of the head that is not normally of concern or even examined. The wild thing is that they recognized her condition, despite it being very rare. The people at NASA often take a lot of grief on Slashdot, but to a person, I've never met a more impressive set of people, and I'm fortunate enough to work at a top-tier university.

The thing is, astronauts undergo pretty serious medical evaluation prior to being sent up. Their medical condition is in no way private from NASA (or whichever agency is sending them up). I have a close friend who made it to the final round before being disqualified because of an incredibly rare condition that is thought to be completely benign on the ground. But because NASA did not have any experience with it in space, they did not want to end up with a disabled astronaut who might jeopardize the mission (which is exactly what happened here).

There are good reasons on both sides of the discussion.

First: medical privacy is pretty well established as a right in the western world. Its pervasiveness thus, suggests a natural extension into missions in space.

But then: space exploration is still very, very experimental. In a deep sense, we do not understand the effects of space on human health. Yes, we know more than we used to, but we really know precious little. Any information about illnesses in evidence during or after space flight have critical importance for the future.

It's not unlike clinical trials, in that sense. No matter what adverse event happens when someone is in a clinical trial, it gets reported. When decisions are later made about approving the treatment under trial, the panel evaluates which events are relevant and which are not based on the evidence. The only difference is that with clinical trials, the data are anonymized, and there's very little chance of identifying which individual had which adverse event. But with spaceflight, there are so very few people involved, and their names are all public, so that process of identification would be / is reasonably straightforward. It might be that medical privacy cannot exist in practical terms, even though it should.

Having thought about it for the few minutes it took to reason through this missive, I'm of the opinion that we are still early enough in the development of spaceflight that medical privacy needs to be waived as a condition of being sent up. The greater good outweighs the individual's right to privacy in this case.

I stridently disagree. A voice conversation of some sort is almost always going to be more efficient than an email one.

Video is more efficient than email and phone is more efficient than video (really, I mean it: take a hard look at how much time is spent just dialing a number versus setting up a video call). In-person is the most efficient of all.

Carefully measure how much time it takes you to write a carefully-worded email versus just saying what's on your mind. For me, the ratio is about 5:1. And then, with an email the response isn't immediate, the correspondent likely didn't take the time to read the email carefully, so gets something wrong, and you have to send a clarification. This cycle repeats a few times. A simple, traditional phone call would have been done in 1/10th the time, and with a better outcome. At least for one-on-one communication, which is what TFS is about.

I had to educate one of my daughters on this very idea just the other day with its two implications. First, if you want to be understood, use the tools that best allow that. And second, if you are too lazy to make that low-level effort, you are implicitly insulting the recipient of your message with the subtext that the effort they spend trying to figure out the meaning of what you wrote is less important than the miniscule time you saved.

For me, as someone whose professional career is built upon communicating ideas, not using the right methods to communicate your message succinctly and accurately to your intended audience is a major failing. If it is out of laziness, then it rises to a character flaw.

Moreover, if your thinking is so clouded that an emoji is the best way of communicating an idea, you need remedial work in expository writing. Or you're hungover, one of the two.

I know of at least one company that was trying to do exactly that: have long tubes into which you pump air to some ridiculous pressure to store energy, and then run turbines from that compressed air when you want to draw back that energy.

No. Tipping is the problem, and the problem has gotten entirely out of hand. Make tipping illegal, and employers will be forced to pay wages that will retain their employees, and then, in turn, raise prices to compensate. At which point, we will have the system that Europe has been using for longer than I know, where being a waiter is not a stop-gap employment option while you're trying to do something else, but a respectable profession. There are establishments I frequent in various parts of the Continent where I see the same waiters working there, year after year, and there is never any problem with the service. Tipping is not expected, and if you do, it's a couple of percent. The prices on the menu are the prices you pay. No extra taxes, no extra tipping. Completely transparent.

It is pure commercial greed that prevents the US from adopting the same rational standard, and instead we get the fraud where the price you see is nowhere near the price you pay, except in very specific, isolated cases like fuel and airline tickets.

That's what's driving the recent increase in asthma: a more aseptic environment.

I ate dirt as a child, and I almost never get sick. My wife lived in a pristine environment and gets sick at the drop of a hat. These anecdotes are examples that are backed up by reams of rigorous science, some of which was done by a friend of mine, looking at the rate of respiratory illness in Papua New Guinea populations pre- and post-westernization. Their conclusion: we would be healthier if we lived with dirt floors.

I've seen Meta's glasses, and they look close enough to normal Ray Bans that you might not give them a second look. What was this guy doing to evoke such ire? I mean they look like normal eye glasses, not something unusual that would stand out like Google Glass.

Dude, learn about punctuation if you want to be understood.

But, you eventually will. Trust me, you will. Time catches up to all.

Best option is to write them down and put them in a bank vault, or similarly secure location. And include the bank identity in your will, which you entrust to a respected legal firm. Make sure that the bank knows what to do with the contents of the safe deposit box if they go belly-up.

Sheesh, talk about a rookie mistake.

Dress rehearsals are intended to be a run-through under full production, not dev, conditions. You hope and pray you never discover problems during dress rehearsals, but they exist for a reason.

And there are countries in Europe where if you do NOT do that sort of minimalist transaction arithmetic, you are given such a serious stink eye by the cashier that you think twice about going back again.

I jest ... but only a little.

There are plenty of places that will take your exposed film, develop, and scan and/or print for you, by mail, or in-person, at least around here. If there's a Hunt's Photo near you, they do a great job.

If you only want digital photos printed, then there are many, many places that will print pro-grade photos for cheap, and the results will be a damn sight better than what you get at the local drug store.