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Comment by baseballdork | Hacker News Reader

I can believe it. Dunno how reasonable it would be to risk having someone in an altered state of mind on the ISS. What do you do if someone has a bad trip or decides to make poor decisions?

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> What do you do if someone has a bad trip or decides to make poor decisions

The space shuttle had a hatch that could be opened to vacuum and was actually padlocked shut on some flights where the mission specialists weren't trusted by the commander [0].

[0] https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/solving-a-nasa-mystery...

If you mean STS-51-B, the commander duct taped the hatch. After that flight a padlock was added for a more permanent solution.

  > “I remember waking up at the beginning of a shift and seeing duct tape on the hatch," Gregory told Ars. "I did not know what the origin of it was, and I didn’t pay any attention to it. I may have, but I don’t recall asking Overmyer about it.”

Also this detail gives me pause:

  > The Space Shuttle has been retired for 13 years, but the padlock remains in the fabric of US spaceflight with Crew Dragon. A commander's lock is an __option__ for NASA's crews flying to the International Space Station on Crew Dragon, as well as private missions.

Why even make it optional? Seems better to officially take responsibility out of the commander's hands and make the lock mandatory. This would greatly reduce risk to onboard trust dynamics, since the commander is just following orders instead of signaling mistrust toward the crew.

This seems like one of those "who needs all those lifeboats??" situations. Why not avert the Titanic now?

Similar to what's been done on earth during such experiments. Just have to do it in a controlled way in a prepared environment, and have both an administrator and a person likely versed in taking the substance to minimize risk. Of course with just a sample of one it won't yield much scientific benefit.

I'm not denying that intoxication leads to more bad decisions.

But sober people also make many bad decisions. A space ship needs to be resilient to bad decisions, and I assume/hope the ISS already is well fortified in that respect.

Typical bad decisions, especially by a professional crew of trained flight engineers, are quite different from "bad trip" bad decisions. Totally different risk vector and one they should have spent precisely zero seconds thinking about in the ISS's design.

It took only 17 Space Shuttle flights before a crew-member threatened to kill themselves causing them to add additional locks to the hatches. I think a few seconds considering what a malicious actor could do would be worth it.

We're not discussing a malicious actor, we're discussing someone having a bad trip on LSD. It is a completely different thing.

The unpredictability means they might as well be a malicious actor.

Not really. Someone panicking on acid would do different things than a sober person trying to knock the ISS out of orbit. Obviously.

'Not really' - best not bet the lives and a huge amount of money on 'Not really'

I don’t know what argument you’re trying to make. The question is: should the ISS be hardened against someone on LSD. My answer is: that is fucking absurd, and generic hardening against malicious actors is tangential at best.

...we're not talking about force-feeding someone a fifth of whiskey here.

A stable, thoughtful, trained scientist, in the company of supportive and emotionally intelligent colleagues, does not present a significant risk when fed a normal dose of LSD.

They absolutely can present a significant risk when fed a normal dose of LSD. And I'm no prude when it comes to this stuff. Very standard advice for psychedelics is set & setting, and "don't be physically trapped in an environment you might find uncomfortable" is a reasonable derivation.

Don't be in the endless void of space which is already emotionally and psychologically taxing on human beings who are verifiably in peak physical and mental condition

Seems like a pretty fucking bad set and setting honestly. Regular astronauts already deal with powerful feelings in their normal job. Adding a drug to that is a bad plan.

Even airplanes aren't resilient to truly bad decisions:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/us/alaska-airlines-off-du...

> What do you do if someone has a bad trip or decides to make poor decisions?

The same thing you do on terra firma. You do your best to keep them calm, and talk them down. I've never had to physically restrain anyone, but seems like that would actually be easier to do on the ISS. Just wrap them up and let 'em float around

I'd also expect bad trips to not be as big of an issue in a NASA sanctioned experiment with a much more closely controlled dose vs some tab you got off the guy in a tye dyed t-shirt at the concert type of situation.

What's nice about the ISS is there's no way for someone to do something accidentally dangerous in there.

Are you being sarcastic?

> I've never had to physically restrain anyone, but seems like that would actually be easier to do on the ISS. Just wrap them up and let 'em float around

A great way of restraining someone is pushing them against an unmovable object. On Earth, that is either the floor or a wall, then you can pin them somewhat against that, at least restricting them somewhat.

Walls and floors are the same in space, and the person can literally float away with six degrees of freedom, at any time.

I feel like physically restraining people would be harder in zero gravity than non-zero.

I was thinking simply a couple of bungee cords wrapped around them to keep them from flailing and then just let them drift around.

That seems crazy. There are like 10 people in space at any given time. The idea that we might have sent someone mentally unstable given that we can be that selective is mind blowing. How in the world can you qualify for this if you aren't the best of the best of the best?

I don’t see mental instability as an independent defect but as a byproduct of some of the long tail aspects needed to be the best of the best. To put another way, many people are motivated to fill a void, that same void can cause mental instability.

I agree to not do it casually

But it could probably be arranged under supervision with an anesthetizer option.

They probably already have some protocol for antisocial or psychotic behavior.

I agree to not do it casually

But it could reasonably be arranged under supervision with an anesthetizer option.

They probably already have some protocol for erratic behavior.

People make poor decisions regardless of drugs.

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