Lovely Peeps! Your cool #history for the day! πŸš€

(You might want to watch with sound off. The music has words & I found it difficult to hear the music, read the text, AND focus on the signing.)

If you want to just enjoy the signing, the full text is within this post. 😊

"Everyone’s talking about Artemis II. The first humans to travel to the moon in 50 years. Historic mission.

But nobody’s talking about the #Deaf men who made it possible.

In the late 1950s, #NASA had a problem. They needed to understand what weightlessness does to the human body. But every test subject kept getting violently motion sick.

So they came to #Gallaudet.

Eleven Deaf men. Most of them 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. Zero-gravity flights. A rotating room for twelve straight days. 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 it needed to send humans into space.

No #Gallaudet_Eleven β€” no Mercury. No Mercury β€” no Apollo. No Apollo β€” no Artemis II.

Sixty years later, four astronauts just flew 252,000 miles from Earth & came home safely.

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

Now you know!"

#Artemis2 #ASL #History #TIL #Nyle_di_Marco

@Her_Doing That is beyond awesome, and he is correct, I did not know that!!
@Her_Doing Have you got a reference on that, please? #interesting #motionsickness
Thanks in advance.

@franciswashere

Hi! I'm not sure what you need me to provide beyond the above - I put 'Gallaudet Eleven' into a search engine and the top three entries were a Wikipedia entry, a NASA blog post from 2017, and a book promotion post from Hatchette Publishers for 'The Gallaudet Eleven' by Kerry O'Malley Cerra & Christina Gerhmann.

I'm sure any of these can give you better leads than I can!

Good luck and have fun down those rabbit trails! 😊

@Sempf

I have learned there is a book 'The Gallaudet Eleven' by Kerry O'Malley Cerra & Christina Gerhmann that I want to add to my teetering TBR pile!

(There may be others! It was the first one I found!)

I am truly fascinated by the biomechanics of how this works - and exactly how NASA learned to compensate for it in hearing crew - and I hope the book might be more of a deep dive into that. 🀩 πŸ™

@Her_Doing diversity is a source of endless strength. you never knew what those who don't fit the mold of "normal" can offer us. there are revelations in our differences that enrich us all

@Yza

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!! πŸ’―

@Her_Doing I’m sorry, I just fell into his eyes.

@Stephenleader

He IS gorgeous, isn't he? πŸ˜„

@Her_Doing I absolutely did not know that and I am glad I know it now. Awesome. Thanks for sharing this.

@CiaraNi

I am *thrilled* it has been so popular!!

I just post stuff *I* like and it means the world to see other people like it too. πŸ₯°

@Her_Doing It's lovely when something that makes us individually say 'wow, that's interesting' echoes with others. Thanks for sharing this extremely interesting new-to-me story.
@glasspusher One of my fave stories about the space program. Thanks for sharing! @Her_Doing

@adhdeanasl @glasspusher

My pleasure - I am so glad it has resonated with so many people!

I thank *you* for boosting! πŸ™

@Her_Doing it is v cash money of you to put all the video text in the post. A+.

@ProcessParsnip

I don't know this expression - I hope it means a good thing! 😯

I just wanted to make it as accessible to as many people as possible, as easily as possible, whether hearing impaired, vision impaired, cognitively impaired, somewhere on the spectrum, signs, but in something other than ASL, or something else, and I realised with the changing camera focus, the words not being in the same place throughout the video, the photos covering him, etc., it could be really difficult.

Yes, you can make adjustments, yes, you can watch the video through several times to be sure you get it all - but why not make it easier for everyone?

I *was* going to put the text in the alt-text section, but when I realised it would all fit in the main body, it was a no-brainer. Again, removing a barrier of even one extra step to try to make it easy for someone.

I realised the second I posted it I hadn't actually included Nyle di Marco's name anywhere πŸ€¦β€β™€οΈ - yes, it is on the TikTok, but that's assuming you can see well enough to see that - so after I added it, I had ONE character to spare! Phew! πŸŽ‰

Thank you. I may not understand the expression, but I realise it is meant as a compliment and I thank you. I put a lot of effort into my posts with images and it is so good to hear it is appreciated. πŸ™ 😊

> v cash money of you to ...
New to me too, but from context: v good of you to give everything up front, no mucking around, no need to chase anything, no waiting to see what happens.

@Her_Doing @ProcessParsnip

@Her_Doing yes! To say something/someone/an action is cash money means very good or praiseworthy.

I'm glad my intent came across anyway. πŸ˜…

Thinking about it it's probably appropriated AAVE so I should stop using it.

@ProcessParsnip

Now I want to go down a rabbit hole of whether it is AAVE or just a local expression! πŸ˜„

But your intention was clear (and the 'A+' helped), and I appreciated it, thank you! πŸ₯°