Astronaut Robb Kulin Becomes First In 50 Years To Resign
For the first time in 50 years, an astronaut has resigned from NASA.
An NBC News report states that astronaut candidate Robb Kulin submitted his resignation to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration roughly halfway through his two-year training program. The somewhat shocking move is the first time somebody has resigned from the program since 1968.
Robb Kulin, 35, left due to personal reasons, which NASA cannot reveal, according to a report from The Hill. The Anchorage, Alaska, native was one of 12 new astronauts in training who was chosen out of 18,300 applicants, which was a record number of applications for the position. To accept the job, Kulin had to quit his work with SpaceX.
Kulin and his 11 colleagues began their two-year stint as astronauts-in-training last August at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. His resignation takes effect on Friday.
“My whole goal coming out of that, and I would say the team’s whole goal, was to make sure that the Falcon 9 was as reliable and successful as possible for SpaceX’s commercial partners but also, of course very importantly, for the crew that will fly on that vehicle. It’s something just that helped us grow stronger and me grow stronger as an engineer,” Kulin said last year, when he was accepted into the position.
NASA astronaut candidate Robb Kulin is first to resign since 1968 https://t.co/doOWwAjtwd
— Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) August 28, 2018
No stranger to hard work, before his gigs with SpaceX and NASA, Kulin worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska, as well as an ice driller in Antarctica. Also, he worked hard for his education, earning a Doctorate in Engineering from UC San Diego. At UCSD, he studied dynamic bone fracture, according to his NASA biography.
Last week, NASA made headlines when a woman lost her internship at the space agency due to a vulgar tweet, which she directed at former NASA engineer Homer Hickam, according to a recent report from the Inquisitr. In her now-deleted tweets, the woman used the “F-word” to announce her excitement over the upcoming internship. Hickam simply replied “Language,” and that’s when she went off on an expletive-laden tweet inviting him to suck her non-existing genitalia because she was going to work at NASA.
Her “oh no” moment likely came when Hickam replied, “And I am on the National Space Council that oversees NASA.” The entire incident led to the woman deleting her Twitter account, and Hickam ultimately deleting his due to the harassment they received over the situation.
Despite the deleted accounts, the woman apologized, and Hickam accepted and also worked to try to get her internship reinstated.
While no press is bad press supposedly, NASA has experienced a few days of unusual headlines recently.
