(Thread On astronaut diversity or lack thereof, particularly the most recent launch, Demo-2). With the preface that Bob and Doug are great guys, I want to address WHY the two astronauts on SpaceX Demo-2 were white dudes, and it goes to the lack of diversity in test pilots. 1/13

So, NASA & SpaceX launched Demo-2 a few weeks ago, and the two chosen astronauts were white dudes. Why is that? Because they were test pilots and the Air Force’s pilot program has its own diversity issues which I hope to address briefly here (altho I’m not an expert). 2/n

Military personnel are largely male dominated for various reasons which I won’t go into (or defend) here. However, the USAF pilot program uses selection criteria that bakes in the lack of diversity caused in part by lack of wealth (in turn caused by racism) elsewhere. 3/n

Here’s an article discussing the criteria and its problems: https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2020/02/21/air-force-confirms-effectiveness-of-a-pilot-selection-tool-even-though-it-may-hinder-diversity/
Critically, it weights previous flight hours heavily when determining who gets the pilot slots in the Air Force. 4/n

It’s easy to see why Black students would have fewer flight hours. Flying is an extremely expense hobby, and owning your own plane is out of reach except for the rich. Belonging to a family which has a plane makes it a lot easier to afford to rack up flight hours. 6/n

There’s an enormous gap in wealth between white & Black families, even bigger than the income gap. There’s ~10x more net wealth in white than Black families (~$300k vs ~$30k). Planes are already expensive even if you don’t have a tenth the wealth. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap/amp/ 7/n

And this is somewhat speculation as I haven’t done the research, but I wonder if a lot of the rich Black families live in more urban areas vs the rich white families. Flying a private plane often is, I would say, more feasible if you live in rural areas. 8/n

Another way to get hours is to belong to a club. I was a member of the local glider club (glider hours count!) in southeast Virginia, and the members are almost all Lilly white, even though the broader area is pretty diverse. 9/n

The instructors & volunteers are also often retirement age. And not too stereotype too much, but older white dudes definitely seem more likely to have older views on race (ie more racist). I kind of felt that energy there. 10/n

Scholarships are given to young students there as part of the club. And as far as I can tell, they went to white students because those were the ones with time during the summer to volunteer for free and have an unpaid, time-consuming hobby during the weekends. 11/n

(Some people in the club were great people... one old German lady there would also protest in my neighborhood every month for peace and nuclear weapon abolition... and I think now BLM, too. But it was still overwhelmingly white.) 12/n

And honestly I question whether we should be picking our astronauts by how well they can fly airplanes. There ain’t no air in space, Dragon has no wings, and the vehicles are exceedingly automated nowadays. It’s just not highly relevant IMHO. But I digress. End of Thread. 13/13