Apparently the Russians keep a firearm on the International Space Station, and with the gun, comes the gun haters:
Former NASA engineer Jim Oberg, who is an author and journalist, wrote about the gun on his Web site. He said the gun has no place in an environment where people are under such high stress.
“There have been cases of severe psychological strain on people in space, strain that they have taken out — that their shipmates worried about the ultimate actions,” Oberg said.Experts said the idea of an astronaut losing control was unthinkable until one year ago, when Lisa Nowak shattered the myth.
My opinion on the matter is if the Russkies have a gun, we should too. We can not allow for a space station gun gap! But in all seriousness, having a firearm on board a return vessel that could get lost in the wilderness for a period isn’t a bad idea. Lisa Nowak is a sign that there’s something horribly wrong with NASA’s screening practices, not that the Russians need to keep dangerous objects out of the space station. Crazy people in a space station is inherently dangerous, weapons or no.
Heck, the rest of the article even had Oberg admitting that anyone on the station bent on murder could kill people by “flipping switches”.
But he then asserts that the Gun Is Bad Anyway, Because.
Funny thing is, NASA used to issue guns to astronauts, for the very reasons you mentioned: survival in the wilderness should the return flight not go all that well. I guess they figured that with the space shuttle (in which you either came down in one piece in the right place, or not at all), it wasn’t that necessary any more. Perhaps with the retirement of the shuttle, they will start issuing firearms again (the new craft is going to be much like the Soyuz craft and the old Apollo-type craft).
Sounds like he simply subscribes to the “guns have mind control rays that cause people to murder” type of fantasy.
Funny, isn’t it, that someone who is a frickin’ engineer for NASA can be stupid. It just goes to show you that intelligence and knowledge are not the same thing.
Have you seen Armageddon?
“What are you doing with a gun in space?”