Saturday, February 20, 2016

The Hopeful Horde

I just read that over 18,000 applications were submitted for the next astronaut candidate selection process.  That's a mean pile of work for the board to review, for sure.  I have a habit of putting numbers of people in perspective by scaling to my home town.  In this case, that's over 9 home towns.  Sweet!  Finding out that I'm just one of an even bigger, writhing, teeming mass daunts me exactly zero/nada/zilch/nicht more than before.  Chances are slim for anybody, regardless of the number of applications, period.  Why sweat it?  Good luck to everybody, and may some truly excellent new astronaut candidates sift out of this bounteous harvest of resumes.  Ad astra per aspera!


-->"We had some incredible people come in-high school track stars, intercollegiate water polo players, international-quality swimmers.  And a lot of them ended up failing.  At the same time, we had guys who had trouble on the runs, guys who had trouble doing push-ups, guys whose teeth would start chattering just looking at the cold ocean, and yet they made it.  And one of the reasons why they made it is they had this relentless perseverance."
~SEAL Lt. Commander Eric Greitens in ”Manhunt” by Peter L. Bergen