If they manage to human rate Vulcan, I don't think it would be technically hard to launch Starliner on it. Just looking at Cygnus which used three different rockets from three different companies.
I'm not trying to relativize, but if an 11 year old can do such mess with a "two-way communication device", then there is a problem with many other things involved.
Yes, exactly. None of us, much less an 11 year old, should have the power to send a small armed militia to go raid someone's home. While calling and false reporting is a serious part of the problem, I think the larger problem is such a police response being commonplace. I can't think of the last time I heard of such a police response actually stopping something heinous from happening, I'm sure it has but I'd be willing to bet the botched operations combined with these swatting calls have done more damage than any good that has come of it.
> What would be a fitting way to go for a cook or an athlete then?
Whatever they liked doing? Being an astronaut at that time implied that he was an aviator. Keeping his licence to fly into the old age of 90 means he most likely loved flying. That is why it is a “fitting way to die”.
I don’t know the cook you mention. Maybe they loved cooking for loved ones. In that case a fitting way to die would be while they are doing that. But maybe it was just their profession, but what made them enjoy their life was watching musicals in the theatre. In that case a fitting way to die would be them dying after watching a great performance on their way out of the theatre.
Maybe it would help if we would contrast this with an “unfitting” way to die? Let’s take the same cook who loves musicals. If she were to try to climb her roof to fix a leak (something she never before professed to care much about) and they slip and fall off the roof. That would be an unfitting way to die.
Dying is probably painfull, scary and confusing in many cases. But the circumstances surrounding it can make it worse or better. Dying in an accident doing something you always hated is worse than dying in an accident doing something you loved.
"Dying in an accident doing something you always hated is worse than dying in an accident doing something you loved."
Dead is dead, though. I do not think the final moments matter as much as all the years before them. So even if I will one day die on the toilet being old, that would be way better, than me dying soon in an climbing accident, even though that sounds more dramatic and I am way more into climbing than toilets.
Did I sound angry? I was just adressing the point that some people seem to value the circumstances of their death more, then the years before that. Wiliam Anders did what he wanted, fine by me, unless he actually was not fit to fly anymore (as this endangers other people), but no one had the guts to tell him that, being a national hero.
The expression is a social game to respond to death. It’s not real. We are not happy how he died. We are happy the way he lived. The game is to invert and mix the two. It’s a form of cognitive dissonance to manage our emotional response so it is positive not negative. You may not feel it yourself which is fine but appreciate that’s what others are doing. It’s not meant to be logical. It’s meant to be illogical.
> We are not happy how he died. We are happy the way he lived.
Exactly.
> It's not real.
"Just because it's made up, doesn't mean it isn't real."
> It’s meant to be illogical.
Not at all. I have a big head, many things can fit into it at the same time. I can experience moderate amount of sadness over this specific person dying at this specific day. (Only a moderate amount because I didn't them personally, and for 90 year old dying is not that remarkable.) And at the same time feel happiness over that he kept flying that long during his life. One can experience both at the same time. If this is illogical to you wait until you taste some sweet and sour sauce.
I do wonder if perception of time changes as you die — maybe those last moments feel oh so much longer, and you experience them as another lifetime (part of why afterlife descriptions of near death can be so rich). Like ST TNG The Inner Light episode.
Perception of time changes in all extreme circumstances - if you are conscious. If you die in your sleep while being high on painkiller, I do not think you notice much. Unless of course you feel your soul make the transformation if that is a thing. No idea, but I do know that time slows down in near death situations - simply because the brain runs faster.
> Dead is dead, though. I do not think the final moments matter as much as all the years before them.
Well indeed. How many people give up what they love because of the fear that it will kill them? This man kept his love for aviation alive until the end.
Because an unfitting way to die is to be stuffed with tubes, half conscious in a bed, shitting your pants uncontrollably. The perspective of dying lying helpless in a hospital or care house is not very appealing to people who had an active life.
Dying in a last scream of fear, angst and struggle regretting a thousand things that may have gone wrong or maybe were just your fault, without having the chance to tell your loved ones how much you love them, and being remembered not only by the incredible flights where no one had gone before, but finally and uttermost by the one that ended your life which will be replayed endlessly in the internets.
I'm going to visit someone who is having it worse, in my opinion.
He's slowly deteriorating from Alzheimers. He won't acknowledge it and has become seriously grumpy. He used to know everyone in his town. He was a good guy. Now, everyone thinks he's an asshole. Everyone who didn't meet him before he started this decline has had a terrible time with him. He curses all the time.
Last week, he forgot to shut off the gas and was found unconscious by the fire department. Now, he will be in a care home against his wishes until the inevitable. This is not the first incident where police had to be phoned, either.
So he's gone from a week liked, active member of the community to being the grumpy old guy that the authorities have to be phoned about in just a couple of years.
I'm going to go see him for a final farewell later this month, I hope he recognises me.
Dying from Alzheimer's is truly terrible. From what I understand, in your final moments the neurons that move your lungs and beat your heart will give up, which is usually the end. And it's not the kind of opioidic kind of forgetting that you have to breathe either. It's pure struggle 'til the final moment.
Back in school I had an art teacher whose father went that way, and it was clear that he was extremely traumatized by witnessing that.
We might be different types of people (your comment about regret strongly suggests we are), but I've been in some very hairy situations where I was fairly sure I was about to die traumatically and I didn't experience any of what you're suggesting. Instead it was a calm resignation or acceptance that was oddly peaceful.
Not that I don't want to live, but I don't fear death and would take the plane crash over wasting in a hospital any day. I have a DNR registered with the health service in my country to make sure that never happens.
You're right. Parent was projecting as well. Both are hypotheticals of ways to die, not an account of what happened or would happen were he not to die from a plane crash.
He went out on his own terms subject to the rules of the way he lived. No excuses. It may not have been his intent to die but he was willing to take the risk. That is the price of true agency.
When you are prepared to die in a plane crash because of your decrepitude, how much risk to others is entailed in a case like this? If the plausible answer is “not that much” I am with you. But nonagenarian self-actualization at the cost of other people’s lives and limbs is a different story.
Most people die painful and slow deaths in a bed surrounded by people they don’t know, or most likely entirely alone. Almost nobody dies peacefully in their sleep, it’s usually some horrible disease or failing bodily function.
If you’re going to die a “fitting” way, it’s going to be because you took your life passion to the extreme.
My take is that he passed doing what he clearly loved: flying. He made some of his greatest achievements in life while in flight and was still flying during his final moments.
Different lifestyles, and different deaths, have different glory and honor attached to them, whether you like it or not.
Being an astronaut that went to the moon and a pilot that dies flying at 90 will always and forever be cooler and more impressive than a cook, and most athletes too. I love this reasoning.
Really? Do you mean countries stopped trading with Germany and lead to the rise of Adolph Hitlers nazi party ? Or do you mean something else? Because if China thinks they’re going to be the next adolf Hitler if we stop buying Chinese crap - I’m not sure that’s a valid argument. Chinese goods are plainly inferior quality , they do not respect patents or trademarks and they completely ignore environmental guidelines, none of these same things can be said for German made goods after the treaty of Versailles. If in fact that the period you are referring to, as your comment is unclear.
