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NASA Can't Ethically Send Astronauts On One-Way Missions To Deep Space

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."

7 of 402 comments (clear)

  1. oblig... by gandhi_2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    The only danger is if they send [them] to that terrible Planet of the Apes.

    Wait a minute....

  2. Then by JustOK · · Score: 5, Funny

    If they can't send them ethically, then send them unethically. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure THAT out.

    --
    rewriting history since 2109
  3. Option #4 by digitalPhant0m · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let China go first.

    1. Re:Option #4 by WormholeFiend · · Score: 5, Funny

      Then Mars would be red in more than one way

  4. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  5. Re:So Stop Calling It "A One Way Mission" by Overzeetop · · Score: 4, Funny

    OTOH, there are no natives to eat them either.

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  6. Re:Ethical is irrelevant. by LongearedBat · · Score: 4, 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.