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Comment by brotherofsteel | Hacker News Reader

Given how few people we can afford to send into space, is it too much to ask that we send the best people we have? Leave the identity politics back on Earth.

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Sure. That's the point. Some of the "best people we have" may have disabilities that don't affect their ability to work in space.

Someone without legs might be more nimble in zero-G. (Hell, there's probably even a significant weight savings.)

What if there's a launch abort and they need to run out from the capsule? What if there's an in-flight abort and the capsule lands in Siberian wildlife? What if..............

What if someone loses their legs on the eventual Mars base? Are they just SOL until another 20 years of research to accommodate people without limbs?

There are an infinite number of what-if scenarios that can be cherry-picked to form an argument.

> What if someone loses their legs on the eventual Mars base? Are they just SOL

Realistically? Yeah, I think they'd die. Even if the Mars base had a trauma surgeon, which is a big 'if', would they really be equipped to handle something that severe? Would there even be enough medical staff to support a surgery that involved? If so, that's must be a very developed Mars base. If the Mars base has facilities more comparable to the ISS than an aircraft carrier, I think anybody in that situation would die.

Are you under the impression people without legs just sit around hoping someone will give them a piggyback ride?

Oscar Pistorius qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics without any.

I'm frankly not sure how this is relevant to a survival scenario where people may or may not be injured.

Anyway, the entire ISS is built around astronauts using their feet as anchors, allowing them to use their hands for work. Without legs, you wouldn't be able to do maintain your position while working in 0g, hence the challenges of spacewalking. There's plenty of videos where astros show how the top of their feet become calloused as they use them to lock in their bodies to the structure.

Again, look to Oscar Pistorius for a concrete example. The man has the same ability to move around as someone with legs, they're just made of carbon fiber. Many prosthetics have sophisticated articulation. We're a long way past the days of peg legs.

I fully expect an organization capable of creating the ISS to be capable of figuring out a way for prosthetics to be usable onboard. Put a bit of velcro on one of these, perhaps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2z8CE2vomY

I’d wouldn’t frame this debate as being about preventing people from entering a store, or going up stairs, or running in a straight line fast, or living a normal life.

This about a government choosing to spend many millions of dollars over 10 years to train this one person to do an insanely difficult job. So you can bet that any disability of any kind is going to be intolerable. They will pick people with 0 physical, mental, behavioural or cognitive disability. Bum kidneys? Out. Don’t react well to a fire or spiders or smoke? Out. Can’t solve the orbits question in less than 63 seconds? Out. Argumentative and not the best team player? Out. Sadly, this will also apply to any sort of physical limitation as well. It would be trivial to add some Velcro here and there, yes, but making the entire astronaut training circuit itself accessible, from everything like the 0g sim harnesses, which expect the weight of legs, to flight training, to the Russian centers, is sadly not gonna happen.

I'm downvoting because you imply that having body abnormalities makes someone lower quality person. A disability should not be taken into account if it is not significant for the job (a rather personal bias).

i agree with the second half of your comment, but with regards to the first part, don’t you think that space travel — an endeavor that subjects the human body and mind to immense, unadapted-for stress — can/should only be undertaken by the most physically and mentally capable?

we’re hardly experts at space travel (google says only 533 people have been to orbit). given that number, any disability is significant for the job of going to space at this point, especially when every action can potentially bring immediate death to everyone around you.

We are sending people in space for the last sixty years. Each of them has been monitored comprehensively and we know what are the stressors during those missions. Especially when it comes to height and legs, they doesn't mean much in zero gravity. If the person is tough enough to survive the acceleration, they should be good to go. The only real issue might be if the equipment has some hidden assumptions for the arm length of the user.

height i could understand. reasonably short people seem like they’d be advantageous for space travel, up to a point — same as pilots on earth. but legs seem.. pretty important. i can’t imagine that someone without legs would be as mobile or able to stabilise themselves as well as legged individuals in low gravity, and doing an eva to repair something outside a spacecraft would seem especially perilous.

That's not what I meant. I meant the best people _for the job_. I agree that candidates shouldn't be excluded because of disabilities that are irrelevant to the job of being an astronaut, but that's not why they're doing this. As the ESA spokesperson says, "it's in the principle of diversity and inclusiveness".

It might not be what you meant, but it's seems to be an underlying principle upon which your argument was based (if accidentally). Otherwise there is no reason to presume that an individual with a disability cannot be the best for the job (which you did).

Also, saying that an action is taken "in the principle of diversity and inclusiveness" does not imply that the decision was solely based on that, so that quote is meaningless to your argument.

You understand diversity and inclusiveness like a sudoku puzzle where you have artificial constraints that must be satisfied in order to complete the task. On the other side, diversity and inclusiveness might be the removal of artificial constraints that limit the choices that one can make.

Why is that worth a downvote? You disagree with his argument, but his comment is contributing to the discussion.

As I said, because it implies that people with disabilities cannot be the best fit for a job and their achievements are not as good as anybody else's but a wasteful charity that is yet another box in a compliance checklist.

Downvote isn't a "I don't agree with your logic" button.

Paul Graham said it is.[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

I don't care for this sort of discrimination. What if the guy with no legs is also the best for the job? You're gonna exclude 'em "just because"?

In space, legs are not required.

To get out of a gravity well, being light is good.

> In space, legs are not required.

Maybe not a hard requirement, but they are very useful. Scott Kelly talks about the hard callouses he had on his feet because you end up using your feet to navigate and hook yourself into place a lot.

https://www.businessinsider.com/scott-kelly-weirdest-thing-y...

Leaving the spacecraft on the ground due to an emergency might require the escapee to be fully ambulatory, though.

You can lack legs and be fully ambulatory. (And murdery, but that's beside the point here.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius

Running on the track is not the same as climbing out of a cramped pressure vessel.

Sure, and if NASA can't find a way for an amputee to safely do that, they'll disqualify them for flight. Some people with fully functional legs fail the egress tests, too.

They should be given a chance to prove the ability, rather than being dismissed out of hand.

The problem occurs when someone thinks they can determine “best” from traits that probably don’t actually matter in space, like being shorter than average or having uneven legs.

I found the movie Gattaca to be a surprisingly good argument for this position despite being fiction and entertainment first and foremost.

> The problem occurs when someone thinks they can determine “best” from traits that probably don’t actually matter in space, like being shorter than average

You got me curious so I looked it up. NASA requires that astronauts be at least 62 inches (5'2", aka 1.57 meters.) So they already permit astronauts to be substantially shorter than average. They wouldn't take people with dwarfism I guess, or people without legs.

If I had to guess, these requirements exist because they need people who are compatible with existing equipment. For instance, astronauts on the ISS do not get personalized EVA suits; they pick one that fits from those which are already up there. Perhaps somebody without legs could fit in a suit with legs just fine (stuff the legs with some towels maybe, if the legs flopping around is a problem?) But for somebody with dwarfism or a related disorder, I can see this being a legitimate problem.

Incidentally, NASA also discriminates against the tall. For the Mercury program they wouldn't take anybody over 71 inches (5'11") and today they won't take anybody over 75 inches (6'3"). This doubtlessly is due to equipment that isn't sized for taller people.

A large part of non-personalized EVA suits is, when an emergency vacuum release occurs you wouldn't want astronauts (cosmonauts, if you prefer) looking for their personalized EVA suit. Seconds matter. I have a disability and would love to go into space, but understand the necessity for uniformity in EVA suits. I'm not trying to be the bad guy, but many of the well articulated amputation prosthesis might risk a suit puncture, the stresses on the body could cause high/low blood sugars when a person is unable to get to medicine or food to regulate their blood sugars, epilepsy is a non-starter, eye sight might be a pass with surgery (though I saw a pilot talking about that above), I saw someone arguing for paralyzed astronauts which was an argument that was beyond me (sorry) - I just don't think we're there yet. If we were at the level of a space elevator, then I think this would be a fantastic plan, and I would be the first in line! But as a disabled person, this seems to put inclusion and politic in front of safety protocol. They aren't just choosing astronauts based on physical performance, these are also startling smart individuals who have worked hard and I don't think that should be forgotten. The vast majority of them are science nerds, not jocks.

You mean Gattaca. The spelling was chosen to only contain the 4 chemical DNA bases. :)

(And I completely agree with your comment)

Some of the best people we have have disabilities.

There are disabilities that would create real difficulties.

ESA identified a few that they seem to think won't create problems and made a really small tweak to their standards.

Well, that seems to me to be an argument in favor of having the widest possible applicant pool, rather than narrowing it.

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