Dead Astronauts

[Deepwater6]

Can someone please explain to me what space agencies such as ESA or Nasa would do with the corpse of a dead astronaut? I was on a site researching something else on the web site deathreferencedesk.org when the author said NASA doesn't have a protocol in dealing with dead bodies or they have not made it public if they do.

 

As humans start taking farther trips to Mars etc. death should at some point begin to happen in space. They wouldn't be able to keep it inside the module with them. Would they body bag the corpse and strap it to the exterior of the ship? If the cause of death is unknown I would think scientist would want to examine it to see if it is at all related to space.

 

If they choose to jettison the body would they send it in a specific direction? thx

[CraigD]

Manned spaceflight planners plan for nearly every imaginable contingency, so I’m pretty sure they’ve written plans for the “someone dies” contingency for every multi-person manned mission since the first Voskhod and Gemini missions in 1964. Since space agencies are very image-conscious, and talking about dead astronauts is bad PR, I doubt they every discussed these plans with the public.

 

My guess would be that, as you mention, returning the body to do a thorough autopsy would be a priority, so jettisoning it into space would be ruled out, unless the ship and crew was large and/or well-equipped enough to perform an thorough autopsy on board. I think storing the body outside, in the cold vacuum of space would also be out, as freezing the body would damage it, reducing what could be learned from an autopsy – unless, again, it were possible to do the autopsy on board.

 

Keeping a body in the open in a room temperature cabin is unpleasant and potentially dangerous, so some way of sealing, or better still, preserving it (without additionally injuring it in ways that would reduce the information revealed in the autopsy), would be needed. Specifically how to do this would depend on what was available on the spacecraft. It the ship had a large refrigerator, that could be used. If it had a large enough airtight storage container, it could be. If every crew member had a spacesuit, her or his suit could be used. If they have emergency rescue balls, one of them could be used.

 

If they choose to jettison the body would they send it in a specific direction?

Unless the ship were orbiting a planet or moon, it wouldn’t much matter, as space is big and bodies are small. If in orbit, you likely wouldn’t want to jettison a body, or anything else, as it would contribute to the space junk problem. It takes a lot of change in velocity to alter an orbit enough to make something fall out of it, so unless the ship has lots of redundant rockets suitable for changing the orbit of a body-size object, or the ship has so much fuel and propellant that it could be used to put the body into a reentry orbit, that could be used for this, they’d likely be stuck with keeping the body, even if they didn’t want to.

[Turtle]

Can someone please explain to me what space agencies such as ESA or Nasa would do with the corpse of a dead astronaut? I was on a site researching something else on the web site deathreferencedesk.org when the author said NASA doesn't have a protocol in dealing with dead bodies or they have not made it public if they do.

 

As humans start taking farther trips to Mars etc. death should at some point begin to happen in space. They wouldn't be able to keep it inside the module with them. Would they body bag the corpse and strap it to the exterior of the ship? If the cause of death is unknown I would think scientist would want to examine it to see if it is at all related to space.

 

If they choose to jettison the body would they send it in a specific direction? thx

 

there is another option for those long hauls & colonization. bon appétit!

 

Cannibals in space: the coevolution of cannibalism and dispersal in spatially structured populations. [quotename=Rudolf VH, Kamo M, Boots M.

]...We also show that cannibalism itself can have important evolutionary consequences and select for increased dispersal rates, thus helping to determine the spatial structure of populations. ...

 

speaking of things nasa doesn't tell us that go on in space, does anyone think that any babies have already been conceived in space whether al natural, by artificial insemination, or by in vitro fertilization? :boy_hug::xparty::girl_hug:

[CraigD]

speaking of things nasa doesn't tell us that go on in space, does anyone think that any babies have already been conceived in space whether al natural, by artificial insemination, or by in vitro fertilization? :boy_hug::xparty::girl_hug:

It’s nearly certain, I think, that no human babies have been conceived in space and later born, because no woman who has recently been in space has given birth.

 

The most thorough examination of the subject I’ve yet found is the TV documentary The Universe: season 3, episode 4: Sex in Space (available here if you have a Netflix subscription). Summarizing, the official position of the American and Russian Space agencies, the only ones who have yet flown women into space, is that no official experiment on human conception has been performed in space, but no strict prohibition on copulation or artificial insemination is in force, either. The consensus of people familiar with space agencies and their culture is that it’s unlikely anyone has conceived “off the record” in space, because astronauts are loath to not only break official rules, but even engage in “frowned on” behavior, as it could embarrass their programs and hurt their and their friends’ careers. Some qualified this by saying that if any off-the-record space conception has been attempted, it was likely by men and women under the former Soviet or Russian space program, because they’re perceived as more tolerant of slightly non-conformist behavior.

 

There’s some evidence that conceiving in microgravity is dangerous to the health of the infant, and stronger evidence that gestation in microgravity is. As shown in the documentary, experiments with rats showed consistent and severe abnormalities in rats conceived and born in space – the lack of normal gravity appears to have caused the rat pups to fail to develop brain areas important to their sense of up and down.

 

There’s also good data and rationale suggesting that people shouldn’t breed after traveling in space for extended periods, because exposure to its high radiation may have damaged their germ genomes. The major space programs have policies of informing astronaut candidates of this risk, and encouraging those who want to have children, especially women, to do so before traveling in space. Some sources say this is a legal requirement in the Chinese program. Again, there’s good animal study evidence supporting this: pups of rats flown in space, returned, then bred on Earth, show significantly more birth defects of various kinds. Short-duration flights seem to pose little risk, as at least a couple of Cosmonauts have now-adult children with no signs of abnormality.

 

It’s tempting to think that the first conception in space might take place on a private spacecraft such as Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, but given that these spacecraft are capable only of sub-orbital flights with only a few minutes in space, I doubt that’ll be possible. Though there’re several vague plans for long-duration private spaceflight, some of which are explicitly designed to facilitate copulation in microgravity (which, as some real video in the The Universe documentary shows, is more mechanically challenging than one might gather from various movie depictions) it’s hard to predict when or if any of those will be realized.

[Turtle]

... snip ...It’s tempting to think that the first conception in space might take place on a private spacecraft such as Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, but given that these spacecraft are capable only of sub-orbital flights with only a few minutes in space, I doubt that’ll be possible. Though there’re several vague plans for long-duration private spaceflight, some of which are explicitly designed to facilitate copulation in microgravity (which, as some real video in the The Universe documentary shows, is more mechanically challenging than one might gather from various movie depictions) it’s hard to predict when or if any of those will be realized.

 

great info craig. :thumbs_up sounds like there are some major hurdles still on the track.

 

i can't help reflecting on the irony of Virgin Galactic hosting the first conjugal visit in space. :doh: welcome to Spaceship 1; your tempting ticket to the 62-mile-high club. :boy_hug::girl_hug: :lol:

[fahrquad]

there is another option for those long hauls & colonization. bon appétit!

 

Cannibals in space: the coevolution of cannibalism and dispersal in spatially structured populations.

 

speaking of things nasa doesn't tell us that go on in space, does anyone think that any babies have already been conceived in space whether al natural, by artificial insemination, or by in vitro fertilization? :boy_hug::xparty::girl_hug:

 

Every waking moment of an astronauts day is choreographed and videotaped. There are no opportunities for recreational sex, and most of the astronauts are happily married and mature adults who do not engage in indiscriminate sex with strangers.