European Space Agency: Wants to Recruit Disabled Astronauts. By the BBC.

Esa will be accepting applications in March to fill four-to-six vacancies in its astro corps but it wants this draft process to be as inclusive as possible. …

Esa is on a big diversity drive. On matters of gender, for example, it has lagged seriously behind. … Just 16% of applicants to the last Esa astronaut call in 2008 were female.

Crippled by politics. Merit is being increasingly kicked to the kerb.

Philip Barton:

I truly do wonder if there is some sort of unidentified brain-wasting disease in the West.

A reader notes:

In the end it increases risk and makes what is already intrinsically dangerous somewhat more dangerous.

It’s an extension of the farcical idea that everyone is the same and therefore that anyone can do anything. They probably can, if everyone subsidises the effort enormously, and that’s the point: this leads to a huge waste of resources. It didn’t happen before because the most efficient approach was to select the genuinely best-suited people for any particular activity.

But now, men are women and vice versa. Disabled people can do anything anyone else can. If women can’t pass selection courses to become marines, lower the standards. Etc.