Going to Mars

Post Reply New Topic

I've thought about this for a while after seeing how some politicians have pushed for us to send people to Mars, as if they could rekindle some of that Cold War 'moon shot' fervor. But let's say that for whatever reason we do decide to send people to another planet. Would AS people - carefully chosen - make a better crew for a 2-4 year voyage?

I wouldn't. My sensory issues as well as severe travel sickness would make the journey impossible.

I wouldn't necessarily say better but definitely useful. Apparently a lot of people at NASA have AS.

You're one of the many NTs who mislabel other normal people as aspies.
According to the neurotypical community, Putin and Gates have Asperger's. NTs think the world is ruled by aspies, that we are the Iluminati. There's lots of misinformation flying around, and I hate BS.
A crew of real aspies should not be sent to Mars, as they would have trouble communicating with the Earth.

I wouldn't think so.

The crew would really need to be able to get along with each other and be able to quickly recognize problems as they occur instead of being surprised later when they are out of control.

Really surprised you think that as I'm quite the opposite. I'm definitely not part of any NT collective that thinks the world is ruled by aspies.

I have noticed that I'm far less inclined than most on this website to label people. I don't think Putin nor Gates have AS, and I don't think the entire crew should consist of people with AS. I do think that somebody with AS could be useful to have on the crew due to the nature of the disorder, though, yes, they'd have to have a mild case. I have read online that NASA has a disproportionate amount of employees with ASD, haven't exactly witnessed it myself.

NASA is unlikely to have many aspie employees, because aspies are very rare.

Not as rare as "neurotypicals who think that aspies rule the world". There are no such people whom I've ever run across.

The therapist who dx'd me, and his collegues, were of the consensus that Bill Gates is an aspie. But that's not the same thing as thinking that there is a cabal of aspies who "rule the world".

I think that Aspies would be a good choice for the crew. Speaking from my point of view, being able to stand isolation and being hyper-organized (I hate surprises, so I always have a contingency plan or two lined up) would be just the traits that would make for a successful mission. They would obviously have to do intensive screenings to select the people with the right traits, but I don't see them finding people in the NT community that could handle the conditions of said mission.

Just to add my $0.02 USD to the sub-topic:

One of our daughter's teachers & a family friend has friends at NASA and frequently gets hired on as support crew for environmental testing trips. In addition, over the years we've met quite a few families of NASA employees and scientists due to where we live. It may be important to note that we live near a NASA *research* facility, not say, a launch site or mission control center.

Two things stood out: NASA appears to have a lot of aspies. And a lot of trans people. It's not surprising as they hire so many engineers & technicians who must be really good. So long as they can be the best at their technical field and communicate well enough, they are appreciated. It also helps to be so focused and saturated / surrounded by their peers. The environment is so structured and filled with other nerds (old term for aspies & NT's with NVLD, OCD, and atypical social skills) that one engineer we met said "it's better than home". So, I'd say NASA clearly hires a larger than typical number of *high functioning* aspies.

Can't speak to either Gates or Putin, but I have heard that Silicon Valley has a significantly higher aspie-rate than the average region of the same size and population. And NASA does have a huge research facility there...

I was just wondering what makes you think this? Last I heard, more than half of all children have an ASD----so, I'm thinking that at least that same number, applies to adults.

You apparently misheard.

Only 1.5 percent of the human race is on the autism spectrum. No way that "half of all children" have it.

But for exactly that reason if say- 3 percent of NASA employees are aspies then that would be "lots of aspies" because it would be twice the proportion of the general population.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 15 Sep 2015, 1:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That can't be right I thought it ranges from 1-2% of the population.

@ naturalplastic and iliketrees: Oops, you're right----I said that wrong!! I remembered hearing the "68", and thought "over half"----when, in fact, it's "ONE in 68 of all children"; BIG difference!!

BTW, NP, I wasn't talking about the "human race", though, I was talking about the U.S. population.

I hold to "Aspies NOT being rare", though----as that's several million people. IMO, 100 would be rare.

It's 1-2% of the population but five times as many boys as girls. Women and girls often (though not always) show Autistic traits differently especially as we get older because of the increased social pressure and greater punishment for showing Autistic traits. There is no logical reason why boys would be that much more Autistic than girls, except for imperfect identification. Here on WP, repeated polls show a much closer to 1:1 ratio of men to women on the spectrum. While those polls aren't carefully controlled and my suffer from self-selection bias or other variables, they are still replicable and still point to a problem. If men and women are Autistic at approximately the same rate but only one woman is identified for every five men, that means that there are likely four women unidentified for every six people who are identified. It would mean that our population is roughly 3% Autistic when factoring this in, not 1-2%.