14 DAY TRIAL // As usual, NASA is being thorough when it comes to absolutely every aspect of the space missions. As the first manned Mars mission is approaching (NASA planning to land on Mars in 30 years), the space agency has begun to think about some unpleasant, yet important, aspects of the mission that could take a few years, only the actual trip taking up to two years.
For instance, when does a critically ill astronaut become expendable? Is it when he consumes too much oxygen, food or water? Who gets left out of the escape pod? Does rank come over brains in the fight for survival?
Thanks to the US Freedom of Information Act, the journalists have got their hands on some uncomfortable issues raised by NASA and the fact that no matter how embarrassing the discussions may be, a complete "instructions manual" has to be written and approved within the following years.
How do you get rid of the body of an astronaut on a three-year mission to Mars and back? A cumbersome question to answer, so NASA doctors and scientists asked the help of outside bioethicists and medical experts, hoping to solve this and many other moral problems.
"As you can imagine, it's a thing that people aren't really comfortable talking about," said Dr. Richard Williams, NASA's chief health and medical officer. "We're trying to develop the ethical framework to equip commanders and mission managers to make some of those difficult decisions should they arrive in the future."
Other aspects would be the labor hours inside and outside the spaceship and consequently the amount of radiation exposure.
More earthly aspects of the human psychology also have to be regulated, like personality clashes between crew mates or fraternizing with mission members of the opposite sex, including here collateral aspects like sexual intercourse or even jealousy.
For now, sex is not mentioned in the document and has long been almost a taboo topic at NASA. Williams said the question of sex in space is not a matter of crew health but a behavioral issue that will have to be taken up by others at NASA.
"There is a decision that is going to have to be made about mixed-sex crews, and there is going to be a lot of debate about it," he said.
When dealing with death it's never easy and unfortunately, situations may appear where the well being of the group will be beyond that of the individual, thus making the astronauts expendable.
"There may come a time in which a significant risk of death has to be weighed against mission success," Wolpe said. "The idea that we will always choose a person's well-being over mission success, it sounds good, but it doesn't really turn out to be necessarily the way decisions always will be made."