A new report from the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine gives NASA managers all the moral wiggle room they’ll ever need for approving long-duration space missions that are highly hazardous to human health. The report begins with a corny quotation from Arthur C. Clarke circa 1968, then examines three decision options for when manned spaceflight “cannot meet current health standards,” which would include just about any proposed foray beyond the low-Earth orbit frontier of the past half-century: 1) “liberalize” the standards 2) establish “more permissive” standards specifically for long-duration trips 3) grant exceptions on a mission-by-mission basis. Only the first two are deemed “ethically unacceptable.” An obvious fourth option–send a robot–is barely mentioned.
Measurements from NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, which carried the Curiosity rover to the Red Planet, showed that humans would suffer a radiation dose of at least two-thirds of a sievert on a roundtrip journey. That’s enough to lift their lifetime probability of dying from cancer to nearly one in four from the average earthbound American’s one in five. Without advances in radiation protection far beyond the current state-of-art, this is the type of extreme hazard that presumably would be granted an exception in order to let the mission proceed.
[Here’s how the National Research Council summarizes the health issue in a recent study: “Using traditional standards for lifetime cancer risk, the NASA Human Research Program has established that the risk of cancer induced by galactic cosmic rays (GCR) exceeds current guidelines for missions with durations longer than 615 days. This is the most optimistic case, for 55-year-old males, without previous radiation exposure, who have never smoked, assuming complete engineered protection (such as shielding crew quarters with water) from solar particle events. For female astronauts, for astronauts younger than 55, for astronauts with previous radiation exposure, and for missions not taking place during solar maximum (when the Sun’s magnetic field provides substantial protection), the permissible durations are much less, approaching 6 months in many cases. It is also probable that other factors, such as non-carcinogenic effects of GCR, musculoskeletal degeneration in zero g, ocular impairment, or psycho-social effects could further limit permissible mission durations.”]
The committee of academic bioethicists and industry consultants (plus a former astronaut and the widow of a former astronaut) seems oblivious to the history of NASA bêtise, aka “flawed safety culture,” and “let’s light this candle” bravura that deeply corrupted the space shuttle program. Adventurism will always attract balls-for-brains volunteers from military coteries, abetted by career managers who fear being perceived as Chicken Little, for missions whose technology may or may not be up to the risk. At least they recommend that NASA keep paying an astronaut’s medical bills for a lifetime.
Update: Trips to Mars won’t be happening, anyway.
