“The real interesting question is, what happens on a mission to Mars or on the lunar space station if there were ,” says Emory University bioethicist Paul Wolpe. NASA’s “Journey to Mars” quotes an estimated three-year round-trip, leaving plenty of time for any number of things to go wrong. No settlement plans are being discussed at NASA (leave those to pie-in-the-sky private groups like Mars One for now), but a crewed mission has been on the docket for some time, and could touch down as early as the 2040s. And any problems that arise on Mars-technical issues or lack of food, for example-could leave an entire crew or colony stranded and fending for themselves. But as we move closer to a human mission to Mars, there’s a higher likelihood that individuals will die-whether that’s on the way, while living in harsh environments, or some other reason. When there have been fatalities, the entire crew has died, leaving no one left to rescue. That’s relatively low, considering our history of blasting folks into space without quite knowing what would happen. We’ve lost only 18 people in space-including 14 NASA astronauts-since humankind first took to strapping ourselves to rockets. Would Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong live out the rest of their days staring at the blue glow of Earth from 250,000 miles away? “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace,” read the contingency speech. ON JULY 21, 1969, when the Apollo 11 crew was due to depart the lunar surface after a 22-hour visit, two speeches were placed on President Richard Nixon’s desk.
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