Astronauts are the best of the best, not just overachievers who both reach for the stars and actually grab them, but also career students. They’re constantly learning.
The time astronauts don’t spend in physical training for the rigors of a space journey, they spend in classrooms, soaking up all the knowledge they can and learning about a wide variety of scientific areas so they can adequately perform all the experiments they’ll need to do in microgravity, not to mention being aware of and knowing how to deal with a whole host of dangers.
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You can believe that if an astronaut makes it to space, it’s because they know their stuff.
But you have to think that they’re a bit less used to dealing with ignorance on the internet.
NASA astronaut Jessica Meir reached the ISS back in September of 2019 on her first trip to orbit.
It was the culmination of a lifelong dream for her, and while she has been working up there, roaring around the planet at an altitude of about 250 miles (400 km) and a speed of 17,500 mph, she even got to make some history.
In October, Meir joined fellow astronaut Christina Koch to become part of the first ever all-female spacewalk , spending seven hours outside the ISS replacing a power control unit.
Needless to say, she’s been having a blast in space.
Getting to share her experiences off-planet has been not only a way for her to inspire new generations, as she reaches out to students between her many experiments, but also provide some perspective about life on Earth.
I mean, getting to see an eclipse from orbit? How cool is that??
Of course, some folks down here below the clouds aren’t terribly receptive to her pics.
And that was made awfully clear with a batch Meir shared on her Twitter feed. As she explained in her caption, the only constant up there is change, which can make things both confusing and interesting.
However, some of the people in her feed could only focus on one thing, claiming that she had faked the pics because the Earth is really flat. Yeah.
The Flat Earth crowd came out of the woodwork.
They were not swayed even a bit by Meir’s photos, focusing on the round-ness of her pics as evidence that the images were the result of a fish-eye lens rather than the Earth being, you know, a globe.
“Nice try with the fish eye, but it’s flat,” wrote one person.
“Why do you guys always use fish eye lenses,” wrote another.
“Imagine lying to billions of people and pretending to be an astronaut. You life must really suck,” wrote yet another.
Yes, the pic was taken with a wide-angle lens. The Earth is still round, not flat.
Nobody had to even go to space to figure it out. Guys, Aristotle and Eratosthenes had it all solved more than 2,000 years ago .
There’s a whole NASA page devoted to all the proof for a spherical Earth — aimed at students in grades 5-8 — that lays it all out in easy to understand, straightforward information.
Meir hasn’t commented on all the Flat Earth hoopla.
It’s easy to assume she’s too busy doing astronaut things than get caught up in internet nonsense anyway. She’s got a mission to focus on, not easily disproven ignorance.
