old men die fast

Hannibal (2013-2015)

Arendt saw this hierarchy of work as a fundamental misunderstanding of what happens in the home—a misunderstanding that arose from the unique temporal features of care work and housework: the labor performed in the home moves so quickly, and produces so rapidly, Arendt wrote, that “its effort is almost as quickly consumed as the effort is spent.” Ancient political philosophers, Arendt writes, at least recognized the vital productivity of their servants, who, they believed, left behind “nothing more or less than their masters’ freedom or, in modern language, their masters’ potential productivity.” In antiquity, the work performed in the home was understood as constant, life-sustaining work that always produced: indeed, it produced the very possibility of public productivity; it created the possibility of shared communal life outside the home.”]

Everyone's talking about Artemis II, the first humans to travel to the moon in 50 years

Historic, right? BUT nobody's talking about the Deaf people who made it possible.

In the late 1950's, NASA had a problem.

They needed to understand what weightlessness did to the human body but every test subject kept getting violently motion sick

NASA needed to figure out FAST during the space race!

So, they went to Gallaudet University. They recruited 11 Deaf people.

Because a number of Deaf people had lost their hearing to spinal meningitis as children which also damaged their vestibular system.

Their inner ears couldn't be overwhelmed. They were immune to motion sickness.

NASA put them in centrifuges. Put them on zero gravity flights. A room for 12 straight days.

(All caps) It rotated the entire time.

One experiment on a ferry in choppy Nova Scotia waters, the researchers got so seasick they had to cancel it. The Gallaudet Eleven? They were playing cards.

Their bodies gave NASA the data and research it needed to send humans into space.

No Gallaudet Eleven? No Mercury. No Apollo. No Artemis II.

They stood on the shoulders of 11 Deaf people most people have never heard of.