> Gina Miller wrote: Spike, I do understand your points, in this detailed
> defense....
Good. With that cleared up, let us proceed. {8^D
> But as you say, NASA or whatever relevant parties, do not cater to
> training crippled
> women for space...
> And as I said previously, I assume that with the
> advancement of technology, in that time, we will have other
> alternatives.(nanotech etc.)
Yes, with nanotech, all this becomes easy. But we can do a Mars colony now. I say lets go!
> I suppose there was a sensation in your previous emails as the the worth
> of a person that was prevalent, and therefor disturbing.
Yes I suspect many folks would find it disturbing to send a "disabled" person to pave the way. My argument is that for certain tasks, they are not disabled at all, they are abled.
> ...that I am a "small woman, who has had a car wreck that
> left me with rods in my leg" (almost left without my leg)....
owwww. {8-[ Sorry to hear that. Glad you are back on your feet. {8-] Would a bigger car have helped? (Very extropian)
> ...There may be some, I in fact I am so nuts, I would
> most likely do so...
Yes and recall that this is a biiig planet with a looot of people. I suspect we could find a most satisfactory and willing adventurer.
> words like, "pathetic or wouldn't miss much anyways" that was in your
> emails, that left a bad taste in my mouth....
oops sorry. I did not mean to imply that this girl I spoke of does not love life as much as you and I do. She does, I can assure you.
As for wouldnt miss much, this might be a key point. Our current track star astronauts might go crazy cooped up in a farm capsule for... ever. There are humans that are preadapted to this kind of existence: those who are bound to their homes for health reasons. My spina biffida example: she would not miss running around in a field of tall grass, shes never been able to do that. She would not miss sex, this being out of the question for her. She would not miss quaffing a thick steak, shes a vegetarian. She can entertain herself for indefinite periods of time with a computer, as she has done for her whole life and could continue to do on the long trip to Mars.
I did realize there was a weakness in my previous arguement: that the spina bifida victim could take a number of frozen embryos to self implant if things go well. In the example I gave, her pelvis is not a whole lot bigger now than it was when she was born. I am not at all sure that her womb is functional, or if so, how the pelvis could be modified to allow both self implantation of a frozen embryo and childbirth without help.
Perhaps someone who is up on current medical technology could help me out here: could an undeveloped vagina be surgically modified into a workable birth canal assuming all voluntary muscles below the sternum are nonfunctional? Could the pelvis be split into two parts for instance and connected by a releasable device? I understand nature provides a cartilage in the female pelvis that comes unglued during the birth process. Could the medics invent something that mimics this process?
If all these heroic measures are taken in order to reduce the crew size to one very small very brave person, the total payload requirements reduce to quite manageable masses. spike