Ron Wanttaja writes:

For good insight, read Mike Mullane's "Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a
Space Shuttle Astronaut." First, it's an absolute hoot. But it otherwise
provides a view into what it takes to make it to the top.

I looked at the excerpt on Amazon, and I've added it to my wish list. It does
look very entertaining (in fact, the excerpt describes the proctological
exam).

What happens to these focussed individuals when the focus is gone? For ten
years, your whole life has been devoted to reaching 100 KM altitude. Once you
become a real, genuine astronaut, what next? After Nowak made her first flight
last July... what did she have in her life that could even come close to the
thrill, the ego-boost, of being "Prime Crew"?

We can be pretty sure that astronauts aren't the kinds of people who crack under
pressure... the selection process weeds these people out. But the RELEASE of
pressure can be just as damaging, and there's no real way to test for it. And I
suspect it's far more harmful to the types of individuals that make it into the
astronaut corps.

My personality is very different from this, and so I had not considered the
potential effects of the "after success" period. Still, Nowak's reaction
seems very extreme.

If anything, I've deliberately avoided this type of life because I don't
consider that being at the top adequately compensates being at the bottom.
Being in pure bliss for me one day and suicidal the next equates to a
disconnection with reality in both situations. By maintaining a more even
keel, you stick closer to reality. But I can see the parallels with
manic-depressive personalities.

In emergencies, it seems that this type of personality would be a handicap,
unless a person can force himself into a manic state at will, in which case it
might work out well. But simply having a consistently calm demeanor might
work just as well.

It's unfortunate that these domains are so competitive. I'm not sure that the
type of personality that succeeds at such competitions is necessarily the best
suited to the tasks in question. A manic-depressive might do the job well,
but there might well be other people without these mood swings who would do as
well or better, but are immediately excluded by competitive recruiting simply
because they don't really have the drive to succeed at any cost.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.