He's Smart But His Birds Are Sloppy

Ten people are competing for two spots on the Japanese Astronaut Corps in a seven day isolation and a series of tests. These people are assigned letters A-J. The first test is to fold a thousand origami cranes; this symbolizes patience and is a Japanese tradition that holds belief that anyone who completes this task will be gifted with longevity and health. The origami will be analyzed deeply looking at the development or loss of patience throughout the folding. 90% of space travel is repairing, maintaining, and assembling the spacecraft. After the first several space missions, each succeeding mission started to gain routine. There were less significant firsts and more boredom. There are two significant categories of astronauts: pilot astronauts and mission specialists. In which the first controls the spacecraft and the latter conducts the scientific research or experiments. On average, one percent of an astronaut’s work is spent in space, and the rest is spent in meetings, evaluating software and hardware, working at Mission Control, or speaking at schools. Astronaut agencies tend to do crazy tests to assess an individual better. For example, the Europen Space Agency would make a phone call at 4:30 am to the applicant. The problem is that there are limited options to relieve stress in a space shuttle. These tests are crucial in assessing the needed skills to survive in space. As such, in the isolation-chamber test, applicants were eliminated because they showed too much irritation, another because he passively showed it. In the end, members E and G were selected for the spots.