# Dumb astronauts: How did this movie trope start?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-astronauts-how-did-this-movie-trope-start/790572>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [July 6, 2017, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-astronauts-how-did-this-movie-trope-start/790572 "2017-07-06T00:08:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2017, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-astronauts-how-did-this-movie-trope-start/790572/41 "2017-07-08T22:56:33Z")

</div>

[Astronaut diaper lady](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak) was the threshold.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Wallaby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/dc4da7/32.png) [@Wallaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallaby)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2017, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-astronauts-how-did-this-movie-trope-start/790572/42 "2017-07-10T02:10:52Z")

</div>

> [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](#):
>
> A lot may have had to do with the earliest astronauts/candidates themselves. Once they found out about it, former all-star-hero-stud test pilots did not take kindly to an essentially passive role as cargo (in Chuck Yeager’s famous phrase, “Spam in a can.”) on what was basically a glorified ballistic missile, following a bunch of rhesus and spider monkeys, macaques, and chimpanzees which had pretty much the same mission responsibilities as they were given.

Back to Feynman - during the Space Shuttle investigation, he found out the Shuttle could be landed fully automatically and controlled from earth. The only things the astronauts did was lower the undercarriage. So his question was ‘Why do they even do that? Involving humans un-necessarily could only f\*\*\* it up’. Sure, have humans around to evaluate whether contingency A, B or C is implemented (and how) if something goes wrong, but don’t give them things to break _ **if you don’t have to** _.

He basically decided it was to appease the astronaut’s egos.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-astronauts-how-did-this-movie-trope-start/790572.md?page=2)