October Crack Clinics
- October 2014
- Climb
This season I held two Indian Creek crack clinics and one Moab women’s clinic: we were lucky to have perfect weather for all the events and incredibly fun groups of people!
Thanks to everyone who attended, to my amazing team: Lisa Hathaway, Chris Kalous, Adeline Guay, Mary Harlan and Chris Hunter, and to the companies who continue to support these events: Evolv, prAna, Mammut, Metolius and Clif Bar. They were the best clinics yet, and I’m looking forward to the spring!
I speak strictly as a fan of human excellence here, and certainly not in
any official capacity, as my life’s trajectory has not taken me
anywhere near NASA or space..
There are but a few humans who go into
space in a generation, and fewer still who earn a berth on the ISS. I
think about what kind of folk should go — scientist, physician,
engineer, physicist, geologist — but the teacher, the late Christa
McAuliffe is one of the most inspiring. I for one am ready for a
climber. Too many things need studying by generalists (and artists
[writers], esthetes, perhaps dietary spartans and ecologists [the
Fremen-like ethicists of Earth]) and, frankly, by athletes (who might
demonstrate once for all that some kind of wheel or cylinder — think
Clarke’s Rama — providing real g [whose partnership with biology has a
four billion year head start in fashioning a bone-loss-free us] is a
must), and I imagine from NASA’s perspective, by students of human
flight, with the perspective, and as we are about to *see*, *depth*
perception they bring. But first, while I’m on the subject, I’d like to vent a little here. Do the NASAs, ESAs, and Bransons recognize the contribution non-fixed-wing pilots could make? Barring this, I’m certain any number of individuals/concerns fixed-wing would be willing to work with you.
One of the other things with which the
space program is having problems is myopia, and they’re not sure why. I
have my suspicions. Earthbound folk of late are suffering it too, and
it has nothing to do with weightlessness, but too much (particularly
small) screen time. Are ISS astronauts’ eyes suffering mainly from
weightlessness, or is the revolution, relatively recently, of screen
mania a dominant contributing factor? As our development has reduced
our outside activity, at least from a survival standpoint, sports has to
a dregree supplanted hunting (though unfortunately not war), and city
(indoor) displaced country, as virtual reality, reality. The eye is
losing its way, and the process seems to be accelerating. Imagine a
cracking wall on (or independent of) the ISS, where a body could chisel,
and the eye hone? If the ISS doesn’t yet have a gym — even if a
somewhat scaled down one — it should.
All of this is by way of asking, Steph, have you considered applying for the Astronaut Corps?
i have not, but that’s a very interesting idea!