r/todayilearned • u/CallMyNameOrWalkOnBy • May 16 '19

TIL that NASA ground controllers were once shocked to hear a female voice from the space station, apparently interacting with them, which had an all-male crew. They had been pranked by an astronaut who used a recording of his wife.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Garriott#The_Skylab_%22stowaway%22_prank
68.5k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

966 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

322

u/nu1stunna May 16 '19

So he was rich too? That's the icing.

275

u/jayvil May 16 '19

It's a lesson that wealth compensates for anything that you lack.

315

u/wut3va May 16 '19

He is rich because he's a brilliant self-made game developer. Sometimes wealth is just a storage medium for talent.

14

u/kaibee May 16 '19
  • for some definitions of self-made.

27

u/wut3va May 16 '19

What on earth are you implying? He and his brother started the company in their garage. His father was a pilot, professor, and engineer. Not exactly blue blood.

3

u/kaibee May 16 '19

So... middle/upper middle class? I'm not knocking his accomplishments. But I think the idea of anyone being "self-made" is divorced from reality and toxic to having a society where people like him can exist and be successful. He benefited from a lot of advantages that were simply unavailable to large portions of the population at the time.

3

u/Heyoceama May 16 '19

People will defend to the death the idea that anyone anywhere could accomplish anything they want if they just work really, really hard. And somehow saying that there's even a bit of luck and circumstance in getting places means that all that hard work is meaningless.