BBC Learnings · Section 6

Astronauts on strike

Have you finished writing that report yet, Neil? Er, not quite.

Level: C1 · 111 sentences

Transcript

  1. Have you finished writing that report yet, Neil?
  2. Er, not quite.
  3. It's almost done.
  4. Well, finish it this morning, please.
  5. Then make sure you've planned all the studio sessions for the week
  6. and show me so I can double-check, OK? OK.
  7. Has this ever happened to you being micromanaged by someone?
  8. That's what it's called when your boss wants to control everything down to the smallest detail.
  9. And I noticed you've written the report in font size 11
  10. when I told you to use size 12.
  11. If this keeps up, I might go on strike.
  12. It wouldn't be the first time someone has refused to continue working
  13. because of an argument with their boss.
  14. Maybe I'd better go easy on Neil.
  15. After all, I don't want a repeat of what happened on the American spaceship Skylab the subject of this programme.
  16. In 1973, three US astronauts on board the Skylab space station
  17. had a disagreement with Mission Control over their workload
  18. in an incident that has, incorrectly, been called the Skylab Space Strike.
  19. But before we find out more,
  20. let me ask you my quiz question.
  21. If that's OK, boss?
  22. Go ahead. Well,
  23. the Skylab astronauts felt they had been given too
  24. much work to complete during the spaceflight.
  25. But how did they protest to their bosses at ground control?
  26. Did they a pretend the radio had broken,
  27. b stop shaving and grow beards,
  28. or c fake the results of their experiments?
  29. I guess a pretending the radio had broken would show
  30. them whose boss although floating in space without radio contact
  31. sounds a bit dangerous to me.
  32. OK, Georgina, we'll find out what really happened later.
  33. Now, Skylab was planned to be the fourth
  34. and final crewed flight to orbit the Earth.
  35. For scientists, it was the last chance to test
  36. out their theories in space and the Skylab crew
  37. were asked to study everything about space travel,
  38. from its effects on the human body to how spiders make webs.
  39. Here's one of the Skylab astronauts, Ed Gibson, telling Lucy Burns,
  40. presenter of BBC World Service programme Witness History,
  41. how they communicated with ground control.
  42. We got our instructions over a teleprinter.
  43. One morning we had about 60 feet of teleprinter
  44. message to cut up and divide up.
  45. understand before you even get to work.
  46. All space missions run to a tight schedule,
  47. all the way down to exercise times and meal breaks.
  48. But the Skylab 4 astronauts felt their ground control
  49. team was being particularly bossy.
  50. And I don't know if you've ever had to do something under the conditions of micromanagement.
  51. It's bad enough for an hour,
  52. but you don't try 24 hours a day.
  53. We're just not constructive that way.
  54. We're not not getting things done the way we
  55. should because we couldn't use our own judgment.
  56. With so many experiments to carry out in a limited time in space,
  57. the Skylab crew had a tight schedule a small
  58. amount of time to finish a job.
  59. Bosses at ground control sent radio messages every morning
  60. detailing exactly their duties for that day.
  61. They sound like real micromanagers, Neil.
  62. Absolutely. Or in other words, bossy always telling people what to do.
  63. Astronaut Ed Gibson wanted to use his professional judgement
  64. to complete the work,
  65. not be bossed around by ground control 24 hours a day
  66. an expression meaning all day and night.
  67. When one of the astronauts got sick,
  68. it was decided that they would take turns talking to ground control.
  69. But one day,
  70. all three of them missed the daily radio meeting
  71. and some NASA bosses thought they'd gone on strike.
  72. In the crisis talks that followed,
  73. both crew and ground control agreed better ways of working and communicating,
  74. and less micromanagement.
  75. But the newspapers had already got hold of the story,
  76. and to this day the incident is misremembered
  77. as the strike in space.
  78. Here's Ed Gibson again,
  79. speaking to BBC World Service's Witness History on what
  80. he learned from the experience.
  81. We all conclude that we all learn something from it.
  82. Micromanagement does not work,
  83. except when you're in a situation that demands it,
  84. like a liftoff or a re-entry.
  85. And fortunately, I think that's been passed on to the space
  86. station people and they've learned that that's the way to go.
  87. In the end,
  88. NASA agreed that trusting people to do their jobs
  89. was the way to go the best method for doing a particular thing.
  90. I told you, Georgina, no one likes being bossed around.
  91. Including the Skylab astronauts.
  92. But was my answer correct?
  93. About how they protested?
  94. Ah yes. In my quiz question,
  95. I asked how the Skylab astronauts protested to their bosses.
  96. What did you say?
  97. I thought the astronauts a pretended the radio had broken.
  98. Ah, good guess, Georgina,
  99. but actually the answer was b they stopped shaving and grew beards,
  100. unless that was just another experiment.
  101. Let's recap the vocabulary,
  102. starting with micromanage control everything down to the smallest detail.
  103. If you're bossy, you're always telling people what to do.
  104. But be careful because your workers might go on strike refuse to work.
  105. The Skylab astronauts had a tight schedule a small
  106. amount of time to complete their jobs.
  107. They felt their bosses were watching them 24 hours a day,
  108. or all the time.
  109. But in the end,
  110. trusting people is the way to go
  111. the best method of doing something.