<story><title>What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he&apos;s not coming back?</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/solving-a-nasa-mystery-why-did-space-shuttle-commanders-lock-the-hatch/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>GeoAtreides</author><text>&amp;gt; If you hate the format of these kinds of article&lt;p&gt;You mean long-form articles? &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Long-form_journalism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Long-form_journalism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think the problem is with the format, but with your expectations. Somehow you were expecting a straight answer to the question in the title; instead, it&amp;#x27;s a detailed look into the incident and the context around it.</text></item><item><author>wantsanagent</author><text>If you hate the format of these kinds of article let me summarize:&lt;p&gt;Guy builds an experiment, flies it, it doesn&amp;#x27;t work, requests more time to get it working, is denied, threatens &amp;#x27;not to come back&amp;#x27;, goes into a depression, worries crew that he&amp;#x27;ll open the door to space, eventually granted more time to work on the experiment, gets it working.&lt;p&gt;There are consequences for letting this kind of person fly and dealing with mental health while on a mission, but that&amp;#x27;s the basic plot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mattjaynes</author><text>No, this is not simply &amp;quot;long-form&amp;quot;, this is &amp;quot;in medias res&amp;quot; where the story starts at a heightened moment of tension, then abruptly stops and rewinds to go back to fill in details of how they got to this exciting moment.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;In_medias_res&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;In_medias_res&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it&amp;#x27;s done to great effect, like in Fight Club (film starts with him at the climax with a gun in his mouth, then rewinds and tells the story).&lt;p&gt;However, it is often used as a clumsy device by novice writers. They use it to get the audience to stick around for their mostly boring story.&lt;p&gt;I see this a lot on Youtube. The Youtuber will start with a compelling question and story, like &amp;quot;There he was... tied to the wall as he watched the firing squad load their weapons with gun powder.... But before we continue our story, what is gun powder? Well, it&amp;#x27;s composed of potassium nitrate, blah, blah, blah....&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;You can tell if &amp;quot;in medias res&amp;quot; is done well or poorly by how you react to it. If you are excited for the detour, then it&amp;#x27;s done well. If instead it feels like a long annoying interruption you want to skip, then it&amp;#x27;s done poorly.&lt;p&gt;For me, it&amp;#x27;s done poorly in this article. I read the first compelling section, then the writer slows everything down to a snail&amp;#x27;s pace to go into some very dry history of NASA without ever really giving a good payoff to the story he opened with.</text></comment>
<story><title>What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he&apos;s not coming back?</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/solving-a-nasa-mystery-why-did-space-shuttle-commanders-lock-the-hatch/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>GeoAtreides</author><text>&amp;gt; If you hate the format of these kinds of article&lt;p&gt;You mean long-form articles? &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Long-form_journalism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Long-form_journalism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think the problem is with the format, but with your expectations. Somehow you were expecting a straight answer to the question in the title; instead, it&amp;#x27;s a detailed look into the incident and the context around it.</text></item><item><author>wantsanagent</author><text>If you hate the format of these kinds of article let me summarize:&lt;p&gt;Guy builds an experiment, flies it, it doesn&amp;#x27;t work, requests more time to get it working, is denied, threatens &amp;#x27;not to come back&amp;#x27;, goes into a depression, worries crew that he&amp;#x27;ll open the door to space, eventually granted more time to work on the experiment, gets it working.&lt;p&gt;There are consequences for letting this kind of person fly and dealing with mental health while on a mission, but that&amp;#x27;s the basic plot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>QuantumGood</author><text>Nowadays there is so much fluff added (as an &amp;quot;SEO hack&amp;quot; to increase reading time) to what could be otherwise short posts, that long-form was bound to suffer by association. Of course, some never liked long form. I prefer it, but not it&amp;#x27;s SEO&amp;#x27;d brethren</text></comment>