Saturday, September 01, 2018
Se-lu 28, ductape edition
We hear stories of Apollo astronauts fixing things with ductape. We hear that Americans are supposedly "independent" and "self-sufficient". We hear that Russians and other Current Enemies are mindless obedient slaves.
If this was ever true, it's no longer true.
Modern Americans are mindless termite-like obedience machines.
A perfect fable:
Mission Control instructed cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev and Sergei Prokopiev to immediately start patching the leak. But the decision reportedly caused some tension aboard the station ... the ISS commander, US astronaut Andrew Feustel, disagreed with the plan. Feustel reportedly wanted to take 24 hours to consider all the possible repair options, since the leak posed no immediate serious threat to the station and the crew. With the Russian cosmonauts eager to fix the cracks, the ISS commander refused to participate in further repairs until NASA and the Russian Space Agency came to an agreement back on Earth. The Russians were left alone to deal with the leak, and on Thursday night they patched the cracks by filling them with epoxy-based sealant and applying duct tape – both part of the standard repair kit.The Russians used ductape and SOLVED THE PROBLEM. The American refused to SOLVE THE PROBLEM. Americans are no longer interested in SOLVING PROBLEMS. We only want to avoid punishment by bureaucrats and lawyers. This is understandable, given Deepstate's addiction to instant extermination of heretics. BUT: This isn't really part of the post-1989 Switchover. It's not really a change of attitude. Russians have ALWAYS been good improvisers and Americans have ALWAYS waited for the highly organized expensive non-solution. Even within the specific context of space stations, this difference is permanent. Orlov included this difference in his 2008 analysis of collapsing empires. He concluded that American collapse will be much more painful BECAUSE Americans have the Kraut habit of waiting for government commands, while Russians are accustomed to ductaping their problems, often with great ingenuity.
Labels: Patient things, se-lu
¶ 12:20 AM
