That is precisely the point. OP cites "UN action in the Balkans" to soothe his wife, whereas UN's inaction led to the first legally recognized genocide in Europe since the end of World War II.
This is what I wonder about Elon Musk. In retrospect, of course humans could build sexy electric cars, reusable rocket boosters, and ubiquitous satellite data services. But humans, or perhaps more accurately, corporations and governments, DID NOT do those things.
It takes an overwhelmingly powerful personality to get anything done, despite the fact there are billions of capable people on this planet.
It wasn't that they didn't have life insurance at all. It was that they couldn't increase their life insurance on the private market either due to their line of work or "Act of God"-style clauses. Or at least they thought that to be the case. This is similar to how some life insurance policies exclude death while acting as a pilot in general aviation.
AFAIK all of them were former military and obviously current government employees so their families would have been entitled to any military life insurance they purchased as well as any pension benefits due (military and federal civilian). I can't give you the exact amounts because it has changed over the years and also depends on how many years of military and/or civilian service you had.
But generally all government employees covered under the retirement plan have an annuity or monthly survivor benefit available that is some portion of their final salary at death or their average salary whichever was higher. Often there is a fixed adder as well (basic death benefit adder right now is $41,000 per year so your spouse would get 50% of your final salary plus $41k).
In addition the federal plan (and social security) pays monthly for surviving children until they reach age 18. The federal plan is a bit nicer in that it pays until 18 or 22 if you are a full time student. Both pay for life if the child is disabled (though the government definition of disabled is rather strict).
All of this is just survivor benefits. Once your surviving spouse retires they are entitled to the pension payments you would have received.
an interesting implication of this is that the government probably didn't want to issue them life insurance because then they would have to explain why they don't do that for all military personnel
The US government does issue life insurance for all military personnel. It's a nominal cost (20 bucks a month IIRC) for something like 400k of coverage. It's been around since 1914[1].
As far as I know all of the astronauts were military at that time, so they probably would have been covered by this program. There could be any number of nuances I'm not aware of though.
I don't know about any of the other Apollo astronauts, and I wasn't around at the time, but I do remember once reading that a big deal was made about Neil Armstrong being a civilian when he landed on the moon.
When I was in we had life insurance. Before every deployment they had lawyers come in and walk us through creating a will, explaining the benefit, etc.
Yeah but Netanyahu tried the same shit regarding Iran with the last few presidents, including the previous incarnation of Trump who had better advisers.
This is the first time the lie has worked to this extent.
Netanyahu has warned that Iran is minutes away from the bomb for the last 30 years. Trumps own intelligence community was telling us that Iran is incapable of producing a bomb just a week or so ago.
Death to America is a great motto, but that's all it really is, they sadly lack the capability to follow through with it. With or without these latest strikes.
The people in Gaza have been starving for nearly 2 years now. Israel was stopping most food trucks from entering for well over a year of Biden's presidency.
Dunno, if the alternative is actively destructive behaviour, it might be good for society for people to find meaning in pets. It's also good for those individuals and animals in question as well. I'm not sure we're missing out on many Requiems, Anna Kareninas, and Space Odysseys because of it.
Animals now play a role that angels and similar religious concepts played in the past - an abstract ideal representing what is Good. It's difficult for a human to win this battle. No dog ever operated a sweatshop, dumped mercury into a river, or siphoned billions off to some tropical island somewhere.
