NASA Can't Ethically Send Astronauts On One-Way Missions To Deep Space 402
Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes "If NASA is serious about deep space missions, it's going to have to change its safety guidelines, because there's no conceivable way that, within the next few years, our engineering capabilities or understanding of things like radiation exposure in space are going to advance far enough for a mission to Mars to be acceptably "safe" for NASA. So, instead, the agency commissioned the National Academies Institute of Medicine to take a look at how it can ethically go about changing those standards. The answer? It likely can't.
In a report released today, the National Academies said that there are essentially three ways NASA can go about doing this, besides completely abandoning deep space forever: It can completely liberalize its health standards, it can establish more permissive "long duration and exploration health standards," or it can create a process by which certain missions are exempt from its safety standards. The team, led by Johns Hopkins University professor Jeffrey Kahn, concluded that only the third option is remotely acceptable."
In a report released today, the National Academies said that there are essentially three ways NASA can go about doing this, besides completely abandoning deep space forever: It can completely liberalize its health standards, it can establish more permissive "long duration and exploration health standards," or it can create a process by which certain missions are exempt from its safety standards. The team, led by Johns Hopkins University professor Jeffrey Kahn, concluded that only the third option is remotely acceptable."
oblig... (Score:5, Funny)
The only danger is if they send [them] to that terrible Planet of the Apes.
Wait a minute....
Ethical is irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ethical is irrelevant. (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether sending a willing astronaut, who understands and chose to do this of his own free will, on a dangerous or even one-way mission is ethical is not a question for anyone except the astronaut.
Can the astronaut accomplish the mission all by him or herself? Or does he/she need a ground crew and a team of engineers to design and build the rocket? If so, then they would all be participants in the astronaut's death. If I decide I want to die and I hand you a gun and ask you to shoot me, is it ethical for you to do so?
It's like trying to decide if gay marriage is "ethical". Unless you're one of the ones involved, nonya business trying to define ethics
But therein lies the problem. There are other people involved.
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Use your gun analogy properly: make the astronaut push the launch button, and the manufacturer is immune from any harm...
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And that is where the analogy falls apart. The launch button requires elaborate set-up, and the rest of the mission requires a large number of people working over many years. Even if you could get legal indemnity I think most people would feel some moral connection.
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This would cause panic and confusion....
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I have no problem killing you if you have made a informed decision.
You want a one way ticket to mars? You are mentally stable, aware of the implications, told your family and waited a cool off period? Great welcome aboard!
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I've told my family I would be willing to go on a one-way mission to Mars. Providing I'm the first to do it, not the twentieth or so. And providing that they are given a house and my daughter's education is paid through college.
So I wouldn't do it if it left my family destitute, but otherwise, what's the problem with this choice?
Re:Ethical is irrelevant. (Score:5, Interesting)
what's the problem with this choice?
Well here's the big problem: it's not worth it. Sending someone to Mars on a suicide mission wouldn't be a national accomplishment, it would be a national disgrace. We wouldn't learn anything new about Mars that we couldn't learn for fewer $ by sending many, many robotic missions. If the justification is "Gee whiz! I'm on Mars", then explain to me why it would have been worth it for the US to "win" the space race if it meant sending a capsule into space before working out the re-entry technology, so that the first man in space would have been incinerated while everyone in the US listened on radio.
Minor problems:
1. It would pretty much guarantee defunding of NASA. If not, then:
2. Lawsuits filed by your daughter against any contractor that participated in the mission and probably the US govt. as well.
3. Lawsuits filed by employees of NASA and those contractors.
Re:Ethical is irrelevant. (Score:4, Insightful)
By your standard, the Plymouth and Jamestown colonies were "suicide missions"; the people who boarded the Mayflower never expected to come back. The first colonists to Mars will never return, and probably wouldn't want to.
But the difference will be, the Martians can phone home pretty easily - where a letter back to England was a rare event in the 1630's.
A "one way" trip isn't necessarily a "suicide mission".
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A "one way" trip isn't necessarily a "suicide mission".
Morally, ethically, and even legally (hence the discussion), there's only a thin veneer of bullshit that separates the two, so let's not pretend there's not a elephant in this room when we're both staring at the thing, especially in this particular case.
Trips hundreds of years ago were at least granted the chance of success because the outcome was truly unknown. We know damn well the fate of those we're sending on a one-way trip to Mars, even with the best of results. So do they, and they accept it.
Call
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Sorry; my crystal ball is in the shop, so I truly do NOT know what the outcome will be. If yours is in good working order, then visit your stockbroker, and your certainties will carry somewhat more weight. Or at least, your bling will.
Oh, yeah, we're all going to die eventually; that much is certain. But nobody is proposing to send humans as sacrifices to the God of War, or that we're just going there to fertilize the Martian dust. There's a CHANCE of survival beyond the first 72 hours, and probably muc
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If the plan was to live a somewhat normal lifespan on Mars it wouldn't be suicide, just a one-way trip. That is the key element in the whole thing, there has to be a plan to live there indefinitely.
Re:Ethical is irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't to say the conditions weren't hard back then, but there's a wide gap between the two.
Re:Ethical is irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're seriously comparing the Eastern seaboard of North America with Mars? Lets see: .145% O2), a minor setback
1. People new a lot about the location before colonising (like we do now about Mars), so we're off to a good start
2. They knew the Americas had a breathable atmosphere (Mars doesn't -
3. They knew the Americas had a habitable climate (Mars doesn't - average -55 celsius), not looking too good for Mars
4. They knew the Americas had native edible flora and fauna (Mars doesn't - we're still trying to find bacteria), survivability on Mars is decreasing
5. They knew the Americas had an ample water supply (Mars does - it'll have to be dug up and melted), well at least they can have a drink as they freeze death
Not detracting from what the colonists did, but they knew that they only needed to pack enough food and water for the voyage and the settlement time, plus the knowledge they could breath was an additional bonus.
Ethics is Relative. PERIOD. (Score:4, Insightful)
If I decide I want to die and I hand you a gun and ask you to shoot me, is it ethical for you to do so?
Yes. Of course. Wouldn't it be ethical for me to inject your life-ending serum were you in terrible pain and wanted to die? OK, what if the pain is mental? What if there is no pain and you're sacrificing yourself for science? Look, just because some folks have a problem with killing people that want to die doesn't mean it's unethical to end people's lives when they really do want to die. That's their life, it's their choice.
You had better wise up quick. Our technological progress may eventually render us immortal. We already have stem-cell brain injections and neuroplasticity drugs to help repair and improve brain function. We'll probably have lab grown 3D printed replacement organs in a decade or so (12 years was the time-line I last saw). Our machine complexity is increasing at an exponential rate. Machines have gained capabilities in a few short decades that took us organic lifeforms billions of years to achieve. So, what happen when you're an immortal? Everyone lives forever whether they want to or not? Fuck. That. Hard.
I've got a game plot I'm working on where we deal with some of these ethical issues. Perhaps in a post-death world old timers will be the ones doing the really risky jobs that machines still can't do because they've been everywhere, done everything, and they aren't all geniuses constantly contributing to science. The ones who want to benefit their society best may decide to do so by taking really dangerous jobs or even suicide missions, boldly going where no man has gone before instead of just wasting resources thinking the same old thoughts and seeing the same old things. Whereas others explore the limits of understanding, they may choose to become daredevils exploring the limits of reality and life itself. In death they can become heroes and die knowing they have sacrificed themselves for the greater good of all.
We don't have to wait for immortality to realize these are noble causes. It's not like we have a shortage of humans that it would cripple us if a few decided to give their lives in the name of science.
If you don't have the freedom to peacefully sacrifice yourself for your species, planet, country, family, etc... then you don't have free will. No one is obliged to help you off yourself, but if they do it's not unethical. Are you even aware of the history of space exploration, or exploration in general? You sound like one of those brain-washed fools who advocate against free will of the terminally ill just to make the medical establishment a huge fortune, profiting via human suffering; Meanwhile staving kids fight wars over diamonds, electronics scraps, or food, with AK47s in Africa and you're not lobbying congress to do jack shit about it. I sure hope I'm wrong about you. Someday you might be one who's begging for death. If you keep that bullshit opinion of yours now, I hope that happens and your kids say, "Sorry gramps, looks like another 8-10 years of excruciating pain. You're not in control of your own life anymore because Pfizer has to make a buck somehow!"
Seriously. How the fuck did this moron get rated so highly is beyond me. Dying for piddling oil wars is somehow acceptable, but to advance the human space frontier is questionably not ethical?! Fuck all those mods, apparently you're not the same species as me after all.
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Seriously. How the fuck did this moron get rated so highly is beyond me.
Perhaps because instead of being a self righteous prick he expressed a valid point very clearly and simply. You on the other hand....
Re:Ethics is Relative. PERIOD. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell yeah. It's OK to send 18 year old barely-not-children-anymore to the hell hole Middle East with a pretty decent chance of dying - and usually for something shitty like a roadside bomb on top of it - not even in direct combat defending something - just in hopes that if they survive their education will be paid for - yet it's not ethical for someone to go to freaking Mars voluntarily if they want?
To quote you - Fuck. That. Hard.
Our priorities here are beyond fucked - but you only have to look at the war budget vs the NASA budget to know that. I'm sure someone has the statistics, but I'm pretty sure that what we spend on NASA in a year is equivalent to what - hours, days in war funding for the Middle East?
Re:Ethics is Relative. PERIOD. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ethics is Relative. PERIOD. (Score:4, Interesting)
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But therein lies the problem. There are other people involved.
So what if there's other people involved? Perhaps something like asking for volunteers to work on the project rather than threatening to fire somebody who doesn't want to work on the project would solve that issue. I'm sure there would be plenty of people already working at NASA who would love to work on the project and who wouldn't have a problem with an astronaut volunteering for a one way trip.
And, why can the military kill people who didn't even volunteer to die? Why can the military use aggressive a
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Re:Ethical is irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Death is part of life, a meaningful death is worth living for and the pinnacle of what it means to live.
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Re:Ethical is irrelevant. (Score:4, Insightful)
We all die.
It's about time that modern society realized that choosing when/where/how to die should be every individual's right.
(just like a lot of those more "primitive" cultures do)
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When the taxpayer is paying for it, and in NASA's case, the taxpayer is always paying for it, it is most certainly the taxpayer's business. And the American public will not take well to suicide missions. First in space death followed by the talking heads wringing their hands about "well, we planned that," and NASA is gone, by public demand.
(I, personally, do not entirely disagree with you, but the political reality is that it's not going to happen.)
Re:Ethical is irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
How many soldiers do we send every year on possibly one way missions?
Re:Ethical is irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we send politicians instead? I like the soldiers.
Re:Ethical is irrelevant. (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, it wouldn't work. Consider the case of an air leak caused by a micro meteor...
Politicians would be using up the remaining air debating whether the leak is real, despite all the evidence, such as dropping air pressure.
Soldiers would be jump into action trying to plug the holes, though hopefully not with bullets.
Re:Ethical is irrelevant. (Score:5, Interesting)
You will always find people willing to die for fame. Every high publicity serial killer generates people who what to take their place on the electric chair. That does not make it ethical to kill them, just because they want you to.
They could replace "America's Got Talent" with, "I Want to Kill Myself on Live TV" and they would not have any problem finding contestants. Would you really consider that an ethical reality TV show?
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If I were 80 years old and in good health, I would volunteer for a one-way trip (colonize Mars, spacewalk on a comet or even the most risky missions like colonize Jupiter).
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Exactly because Japan sent old men into Fukushima's reactor, knowing the risk and offering hefty sums for their descendents.
Can you provide a reference for this? Because I can't find any evidence that it actually happened. (I know some old men volunteered to go, but I can't find any evidence that TEPCO took them up on their offer)
Then (Score:5, Funny)
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Chances of NASA sending an astronaut anywhere are approximately zero at this point so whether is ethical or not is kind of a moot point.
Option #4 (Score:5, Funny)
Let China go first.
Re:Option #4 (Score:5, Funny)
Then Mars would be red in more than one way
that's why China will do it and we won't. (Score:5, Insightful)
We've lost all tolerance for risk or voluntary harm in the pursuit of a larger objective.
But no worries. China is picking up where the USA left off on a lot of fronts.
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The US is pretty much being bogged down in will it generate a profit even to the point of escalating costs because of course your costs are some else's profits, really self destructive stuff.
3rd world Oligarchy starving in pollution (Score:2)
Someone said the following in regards to any "forget the USA, China's all over X b/c the USA has Y failing"
China has slum cities - Detroit is abandoned (Score:3)
There is absolutely no comparison.
First, all major cities in human history have had homeless people living in them...this isn't about that at all
***population density*** in Detroit/Chicago is much less by several orders of magnitude.
America doesn't have slums like this: http://image.architonic.com/im... [architonic.com]
China has **slum cities** with no city sewage services...with >10,000 people living in it
**that** is shitting in the streets
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Posting to undo wrong moderation.
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People are willing to break their arms, legs and backs and yes, even die for my entertainment,
The participants in the Olympics are not there for your entertainment. They're there because they want to excel and need to compete against others to do so. There are many other events that they compete in that aren't globally televised, and their chance of death or injury is just as great for those.
People who climb and die on high mountains pay to suffer.
You clearly have no idea why people strive to be the best at something, or to do things that others cannot.
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You clearly have no idea why people strive ...to do things that others cannot.
Sorry, I think you're misreading here, and I think we all agree. Humans demonstrate amazing dedication, endurance, and sacrifice to do totally impractical things *purely* to strive for a first-performance, or a record, even if only a handful of other humans really care once the cameras turn off. In the past, humans have gone exploring this planet, even if it meant never coming back to their starting point. Who knows how many died failing to find one of the Pacific islands, or finding one that had insuff
Realistically (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no conceivable way that, within the next few years, our engineering capabilities or understanding of things will be able to do a manned deep space mission to Mars, safe or not. We could try to just put a bunch of guys in a box and send it that way. I doubt we could design, build, orbit, and then get the box on it's way in the "next few years". Let's be serious. Nobody with space capability is looking at a Mars mission any time soon (next few decades*). The level of complexity needed will take time, research, and money. We didn't go to the moon till Apollo 11. Once you start seeing your Mars missions planned, let alone counting up, then we can start being serious about going to Mars. Seriously, we need to test deep space habitats. Long term independent space habitats. Long range movement of large structural objects in space. I bet we will have a deep space station and have sent something similar in a long trip around the moon long before we attempt Mars.
*Elon Musk said it's possible in the next 10-12 years. I think he is just being overly optimistic, and that is overly optimistic, to get in the papers.
Re:Realistically (Score:5, Insightful)
Which was, it must be noted, only eight years after the first American went into space.
It's now been 40+ years since a human went beyond LEO...which is sad.
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We could, we just don't want to. It would take an Apollo program style effort and we don't have the will to do that anymore.
We have reasonably long term habitation in the ISS. We can dust off old NERVA designs, they were about ready to fly test articles. Huge amounts of work to do, hundreds of billions of dollars, but we could do it for less than the cost of the Iraq war.
The answer to the Fermi paradox is that we simply aren't worth talking to.
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We could, we just don't want to.
Personally, I find it very amusing that you're having serious discussions about the ethics of long distance space missions when you can't even get their astronauts to ISS without the Russians, and you're imposing sanctions on them this very moment.
Not real sanctions, more like those really annoying passive aggressive types that you tell them to do something, they give you the finger, then they go do it while muttering under their breath.
The US is a joke.
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Nobod's suggesting we send colonists! Well, nobody serious.
We've sent a lot of probes to Mars in the last couple of decades, a number of which soft-landed. A mission to take astronaust to Martian orbit could be done in a few years, with proper funding. A more likely scenario is landing and getting back, that would take a couple of decades to plan and develop, but it isn't really that far fetched.
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We've been sending an increasing number of unmanned probes to Mars every "launch window" for the last decade, and the probes have been getting bigger each time. A habitat going to Mars might more resemble an inflatable balloon than a metal box, present tech for radiation shielding looks more at things like polyethelene than lead due to high energy scattering effects. No, the problems aren't all solved yet to an "acceptable level of risk" or "highly economical mission cost", but that doesn't mean they're i
Just make them sign an agreement (Score:2)
"I understand and agree that taking part in this mission will result my death"
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Make it a click-through on the employment app....
What About Seniors And The Terminally Ill? (Score:2)
Surely, given the activity level of many seniors, they could take on the really dangerous missions. Same goes for terminally ill people. If they're more concerned with science and discovery than with coming home, we'd all be better off. I'd guess that there are many seniors/terminally ill folks who be willing to take on a dangerous mission with little or no chance of returning. I'm not either of those and I would jump at such a chance. Why should we waste all that human potential?
Just sayin'.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Then, when they expire, you could strap 'em to the hull for radiation shielding....
Seriously, there are plenty of healthy people - more likely to accomplish the mission objectives and also willing to go.
This isn't John Glenn's joyride on the shuttle, we're talking about actual pioneering - requiring, you know, pioneers....
Re:What About Seniors And The Terminally Ill? (Score:4, Insightful)
There most certainly are plenty of healthy people who could go. However, I disagree that younger people could perform better than older people. Okay, the terminally ill would be a poor choice.
In a low (1/6G on the moon, for example), older folks would be just as capable as younger ones to perform low G construction, scientific testing, spaceport management, all kinds of stuff. In fact, many of the jobs necessary in low gravity/free fall would be just fine for those in their late fifties and sixties.
In fact, they would be a wonderful resource for long-term missions to the outer planets as well as helping to engineer space habitats, moon facilities and even martian exploration.
As long as the worker is healthy enough to survive the trip to LEO, they should be perfectly able to perform tasks for which they are trained (how many engineers, scientists and the myriad of other specialties required for space exploration, development and colonization are in that age range? A whole lot). Unless, of course, you think that somehow being older makes you less intellectually capable. The average lifespan of an American is somewhere around 75 years. I ask again, why waste a valuable resource?
What is more, this would obviate many of the evolutionary and ethical issues seen with younger participants.
I'm approaching 50, and I'll let you in on a little secret, we're not as tough as we act at this age. I had better senses, attention span, cognitive speed, reflexes, learning speed, joint mobility, stamina and a host of other useful, animal skills when I was 25 to 35 years old. Of course, I'm still "better with age" but that's basically experience at work, and 99% of what makes me better today than I was 20 years ago can be replaced by a team of experts at the other end of a radio link.
If I were the mission planner and I could have a ground crew of 200, but only 12 on the mission, I'd keep the grey hair down with their families, let 'em work ordinary 8 hour shifts and take normal vacations - you get better people that way, and you want the best people you can get. If you take the brightest, most talented and experienced person and caffeine fuel them for 18 hour shifts, you're still not getting better performance than you would from a team of 3 people who have figured out what's important to them in life and also happen to be experts in their field.
So, I'm saying, put the wunder-kind on the mission vehicle, support them with experienced ground crew. When the pioneers have established a reliable shirt-sleeve living and working environment that doesn't demand too much of the residents, then think about sending the old folks - they'll be able to contribute in great ways; but for pioneers you're better off working with people that don't have heavy family ties, arthritis, kidney stones and the occasional cancer that needs treatment.
Ethics? Bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I cannot understand how it could possibly be unethical to explain the dangers and still give candidates the right to say, "yeah, I know I'm not coming back. For personal pride, for adventure, for my country, and for humanity I choose to go anyway. Now step aside and light this candle."
It's NASA's candle and the Astronauts don't get to choose if it gets lit.
Risk versus certainty (Score:2)
There is a difference between a risky endeavour and certain death.
Instinctively, we accept risk of death when the reward justifies it. Being a successful astronaut is rewarding - in terms of prestige if nothing else.
A compelling scientific mission that will add to human knowledge is arguably more rewarding for civilization, but not for the individual who dies, and the reward is too abstract for our instinctive response.
Plus it's not obvious that there is a lot that live astronauts can do that do that robot
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There is a difference between a risky endeavour and certain death.
Not really. There are some fields of endeavor that are incredibly, inherently, irreducibly dangerous. Space travel is one of them. There's not much of a gap between, say, a 25% chance of fiery or icy death and a 100% one. It's certainly not the same as the difference between driving to work and taking flight in a space shuttle.
Instinctively, we accept risk of death when the reward justifies it. Being a successful astronaut is rewarding - in terms of prestige if nothing else.
Have you ever listened to an astronaut? To a person, they'd all return to space in a heartbeat if asked. Their motivations have very little to do with personal prestige - they just wa
U.S. can not ethically send soldiers to Iraq... (Score:4, Interesting)
robots (Score:5, Informative)
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And you know this how?
It's not like we've ever experimented with living on another planet or anything.
And another thing, why is the National Academy acting like they have any control over NASA? It's not like they're an arm of the US Government or anything....
Re:robots (Score:5, Insightful)
And you know this how? It's not like we've ever experimented with living on another planet or anything.
Sure we have (by approximation, anyway):
Note that all three of the above represent "easy" scenarios, where help and/or an emergency return to Earth is always minutes, hours, or days away. On Mars (or en route to Mars), help from or escape to Earth would not be a likely option.
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Stick to robotic missions, which are better value for money anyway.
I know that's the common belief, but is it true?
Robotic missions are cheaper. But robotic missions seem to beget more robotic missions to answer questions that the first robotic missions weren't able to answer. And so on and so on and so on.
Did we learn more about the Moon from the 6 Apollo missions that landed than we did from the 18 or so successful Soviet Lunar probes?
Let's say it would take us 20 years to prepare a Mars mission. Would it be better to spend that money and have scientists on Mars who c
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There was a time when attempting to cross an ocean was suicide, but the technology get better. Well, the financial rewards got better and technology caught up.
In any case, the analogous space travel technology is not there yet.
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Re:robots (Score:5, Insightful)
Reporter: I have to ask you the same question people back home are asking about space these days. Is it worth it? Should we just pull back? Forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own problems, at home.
Cmdr. Jeffrey Sinclair: No. We have to stay here. And there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes, and - all of this - all of this - was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars.
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Why should we worry about earth becoming uninhabitable for humans? What evidence exists out there that all 7 billion lives can be wiped at once, besides the imagined science fiction? Why haven't the astronomers observed such catastrophic events in the past?
The best thing that we can do as a species to make sure we survive and that our planet remains inhabitable is to reduce the population growth, perhaps plan for a reduction of population overall, stick with environmentally sound and sustainable energy gene
Spam in a can (Score:2)
In this case, microwaved spam.
THIS IS SIMPLE.... (Score:2)
You send astronaughts who are diagnosed with terminal illnesses. Particularly, those with a number of years left of health, but for which eventually, will die anyways.
Re:THIS IS SIMPLE.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Particularly, those with a number of years left of health, but for which eventually, will die anyways.
Good news! That already describes all of our astronauts.
Exploration isn't safe (Score:5, Interesting)
Magellan didn't survive Magellan's expedition. Scott died trying to get to the South Pole. Mallory died climbing Mt Everest.
How many still die climbing everest even though its been climbed thousands of times? How many people die in bat-suits?
We are not talking about forcing people to take risks, but rather of looking for people who are willing to risk death to become immortalized in history. Have we become such collective cowards that we will not accept risks that daredevils accept daily for fun?
Take volunteers. Make sure that they understand the risk and are not in any way coerced. Send them out. If they die, build a grand monument to their heroism, and look for more volunteers. If they succeed build grand monuments, and bury them there when they die later - as they inevitably will.
In a hundred years everyone reading this will be dead. Give a few of them a chance to do die doing something magnificent.
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Problem here is that you cannot ethically send anybody to certain death just to go explore Mars first hand.
The radiation exposure required for a trip to Mars is significant. The total expected dose is high enough to warrant asking ethical questions about what risks we are asking people to take to make the trip. Where I am sure all of the space going crew members would be totally aware of the risks and agree to them, that still doesn't exempt NASA from the moral and ethical obligation to asses the risks a
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Problem here is that you cannot ethically send anybody to certain death just to go explore Mars first hand.
Of course you can. This whole argument is ridiculous. YOUR ethical system may not allow YOU to voluntarily go to your death that way, or YOUR ethical system may not allow people to be forced to go, but MY ethical system says if they CHOOSE to go KNOWING the danger then let them. Why should you make that choice for them?
The radiation exposure required for a trip to Mars is significant. The total expected dose is high enough to warrant asking ethical questions about what risks we are asking people to take to make the trip.
The risks they will be facing on that trip are TECHNICAL issues, not ethical ones. Whether they want to risk it and whether we want to allow them to risk it are ethical issues, and it is r
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At some point, somebody needs to draw a line and say, over there is too much risk to be acceptable,
That task belongs to the persons taking the risks, not you.
If we don't have boundaries and stick by them, things like Challenger or Apollo 1 will happen and we will have needless loss of life because we didn't asses risks properly or take them seriously enough.
There's a big difference between "taking a calculated risk", or even "choosing to commit to a one-way trip", and "not taking the risk seriously". Challenger was a horror not just because people died, but because it was ALREADY KNOWN that the O-rings and joints were a weak spot in the design and were particularly affected by the cold conditions. The astronauts CHOSE to sign on with the implicit understanding that everyone behind them was doing their absolute best, and in this case institutional inertia hel
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Problem here is that you cannot ethically send anybody to certain death just to go explore Mars first hand.
The radiation exposure required for a trip to Mars is significant. The total expected dose is high enough to warrant asking ethical questions about what risks we are asking people to take to make the trip. Where I am sure all of the space going crew members would be totally aware of the risks and agree to them, that still doesn't exempt NASA from the moral and ethical obligation to asses the risks and mediate them.
At some point, somebody needs to draw a line and say, over there is too much risk to be acceptable, we will stay on this side of the line. If we don't have boundaries and stick by them, things like Challenger or Apollo 1 will happen and we will have needless loss of life because we didn't asses risks properly or take them seriously enough.
Of course you can send someone to certain death. The problem is peoples ethical radars are so fucked up today that they don't believe in peoples right to make such a decision for themselves. Personally I find it far more ethically questionable that you believe people don't have a right to make this decision for themselves.
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I am content for there to me more Challengers and Apollo 1's. We honor brave people because they take risks. I believe it is wonderful and noble that people are willing to die to expand mankind's reach. This loss of life is not needless, it is the natural result of pushing the limits.
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The interesting question is did they need to be sent?
To me, exploration is about seeing what has never been seen. That can easily be done with robotic probes that have cameras and we would see what has never been seen on our screens at home. I've enjoyed the various views of Mars, Venus, Titan, and the Moon. There's not a great reason to send people out there to explore the Solar System.
However, if we want to learn about what we're seeing, I think people are a better choice than probes.
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It depends on the long term goal. Personally I have a long term goal of human expansion into the universe, and I believe that to further that goal we need to try - accepting that many of the explorers will die. If the goal is pure planetary science, then it may well be possible to do it with robots.
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Magellan didn't survive Magellan's expedition. Scott died trying to get to the South Pole.
No, Scott died trying to get *back*. On the other hand, the ancestors of the various Pacific Island peoples managed to find their ways to little dots of rock in the middle of a really big ocean, and managed to survive and succeed and have descendents to be ancestors of. There must be a few remnants of that DNA left in some humans, somewhere.
I Volunteer. (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a chronic disease that can be controlled through medication that already limits my lifespan.
Because of this I deliberately have no children or spouse and I avoid developing long term relationships.
My Parents are old and are unlikely to outlive me anyway.
I am aware of the implications of a one way trip to Mars and realise I wont be coming back and wont have any new companions for at least 10 years... if ever.
Send me.
Or... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And government is different how?
It wouldn't be the first time (Score:2)
The only difference is that no one else gets killed in the process and humankind benefits from it.
definition of "safe" (Score:2)
NASA can do alot of things but they suffer from "paralysis by analysis"
It comes from the assumption that "safety" as a concept can be quantified. And that's just the beginning...sure we can use data to examine possible avenues of mission failure but we put too much of our decision making process into raw numbers.
"risk assessment" as applied by NASA is a reductive concept.
Success or failure of a mission is a question of identifying & mitigating all the factors that may cause the conditions we define as "
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Success or failure of a mission is a question of identifying & mitigating all the factors that may cause the conditions we define as "failure"
That is what Operational Risk Management is all about.
When "success" includes "the participants don't come back" as part of the mission, then it isn't a risk management decision anymore. Saying "it's too risky" because "they won't come back" is meaningless.
It's fatalism at its worst. Nobody will come back from any of the first 100 manned missions to other star systems. We better not do them, it's "too risky" and we might "fail" because people will "die" doing this. Let's just sit back and relax and have
engineering limitations not "too risky" (Score:2)
Thnx for the comment...I think we're likeminded on this topic
So here's where TFA makes the error:
then this **isn't** a question of "risk" at all...it's about limitations of engineering and materials science
the assumption/error is when TFA says "there's no conceivable way"...that's B.S.
hundreds...***hundreds*** of studies h
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Sure they can (Score:2)
We sent people up into space when we thought there was a 50/50 chance they'd die in the process.
It's called "being an astronaut".
Don't like, don't sign up.
Wimps.
Biological tests (Score:2)
Or, we could come back to our senses and do basic animal tests for long term deep space exposure. Like, start from a small rotating artificial gravity satellite with lab rats, and if you really have balls, send a couple of chimps to loop around the mars and come back.
We did that in early days no problem, and it retired a lot of early risks for humans.
Hey, we even had a grassroots program : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org] - got no real support or funding by NASA.
In fact its super lame that we only have dat
Just keep sending the robots to other planets, duh (Score:2)
Manned space programs are significantly more expensive and the benefits are dubious.
Here is the Ethical Dilemma (Score:3)
No, it is not that you can't ever send a person on a mission with a high risk of premature death - it is that you need a compelling reason to do so.
What is the compelling reason here? Is the compelling reason that the astronaut can collect scientific data that a robot cannot? This is a ridiculous proposition, if you give it any serious thought at all. Any instrument the astronaut can operate, a robot can operate with remote human guidance. Cameras can see anything the astronaut can see through his helmet or window, and much, much better too. Mechanical tactile sensors can be vastly more sensitive than hands reaching through thick pressurized gloves.
Or do you imagine that this lone astronaut will perform science that cannot be matched by, oh, 100,000 scientists back on Earth not tasked with life-and-death survival problems every second of every day?
And sample return missions are far more productive when you don't need to return a scientist and all of his/her life support equipment, before you get your first gram of actual sample.
Bottom line - sending a person to Mars has vastly less scientific value than spending the same amount on robotic missions, collecting data for the world's scientists.
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I apologize for not having mod points.
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Most early voyagers to the New World knew they were basically heading to a vast mass of untouched wilderness. People going to Mars will be heading for a cold, barren desert with no oxygen, and there won't be any natives to bail them out when they starve either.
Re:So Stop Calling It "A One Way Mission" (Score:5, Funny)
OTOH, there are no natives to eat them either.
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They can be the first settlers on Mars. Did most early voyagers to the New World worry about how they'll get back? They were going to live there. We can do the same for Mars.
Oh great, so for this to work out, we need to be able to provide a reasonable expectation that the people going one way will be able to survive though what remains of their natural lives. So if you are sending some group with an average age of about 30, you are going to have to provide 60 years or so of equipment and supplies, get it all on the surface of Mars in the general vicinity of where your colony will be located. No, you just made this a whole lot worse.
The real issue is radiation exposure during