re: Armageddon is a severely underrated movie, IMO.

I'm sorry guys.

But every time I see a scene from Armageddon, I get chills.

It's just cemented that much into my past that it's important to me.

I don't think that teaching an astronaut to drill vs teaching drillers to be astronauts is a good argument. These drillers were only astronauts in the sense of they were explorers. They were practically passengers until they got to the asteroid where they drilled.

If you know about all the precautions that NASA takes with their astronauts it's because they are vary wary of their investments.

The only investment they need here is 1 of the 2 ships and one of the armadillos to make a hole. The rest is expendable. Hell, they didn't even have to return!

So, if you have a crew of expert drillers who are passengers, wouldn't that be easier? And to match this reasoning to reality...in a recent episode of Mythbusters the two hosts trained for ONLY a few days to fly in a plane that has the highest cruising altitude. The Space Station is the next highest manned object. These 2 civilians trained to ride in a craft far more difficult to be in than a space shuttle.

So to those of you saying that it's easier to teach astronauts to drill, you have a real world example of how that's not the most reliable reasoning.