From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sun Mar 28 1999 - 00:29:39 MST
Gina Miller wrote:
> Okay, I'll give you that. But your descriptions were, well lets say a
> little uneasy to say the least. I wonder if your suggestion would even
> be one to conseder at that point of technological advances.
Gina, I could perhaps have introduced the concept a little more
gradually or gently to avoid squicking those recently joining the
conversation. {8^D Please follow me here:
Two good friends tied the knot upon graduating high school
and within a year a baby girl was conceived. By ultrasound
they learned their fetus was extensively handicapped. After
an agonizing month, they decided to go thru with the birth.
She was born with a severe case of spina bifida, with myelocele
(exposed section of spine with unformed lower vertebrae).
The doctors considered her chances of reaching her teens
as a poor, but said if she manages to survive to the end of the growth
time, she might have many years of adulthood.
Turns out, this child was given a wonderful gift to compensate
for her physical deformity: a triple dose of courage, can-do attitude
and fighting spirit. She can do many wonderful things, that you and
I cannot do: she drags her tiny and useless aft limbs along the floor,
but her arms have compensated. She can lift her weight
with either arm (admittedly not much weight) and can
clamber up on a chair without turning it over. She uses
her chin as an appendage of sorts. She is fiercely independent,
and can do for herself quite competently.
I have refered to this girl as "child" but in fact she turns
20 this summer, beating the medics dire predictions.
Nowthen, consider the facts that we know from our
extensive experience from the commie space station:
weightlessness is bad for you. Even if the astronauts
exercise, they practically have to be carried off the
lander after a few month on orbit. The large bones
immediately start to dump calcium after launch, by which
I mean the femurs and tibias. All that excess calcium does
all kinds of harm to the kidneys and other organs, in
addition to all the muscle atrophy that takes place.
Fact: weightlessness is unhealthy.
So who do we choose for astronauts? We choose fighter
pilots, all American, football playing, built-like-greek-
gods, mostly men. Exactly the type that will suffer most
from going weightless for the 8 month trip to Mars.
Why not a small woman? Why not get a small handicapped
woman without those big muscular femurs? Nevermind
the calcium dumping aspect, what about the fact that she
eats a fraction of a normal sized man, and produces a
fraction the solid and liquid wastes, and can be comfortable
in a much smaller space? She has entertained herself for
years with video games. A long space voyage would not
be all that different from her previous life.
If we used a physically challenged person for the first
Mars mission, it would form a wonderful morale booster
for the earthbound handicapped. It would make the term
"differently abled" into more than just the latest politically
correct term for crippled, it would come to actually
mean *differently abled* because it would
point out that these people really are better at some
tasks than are "normal" people.
Eliezer has encouraged us to talk about things that
we can start doing right now, as opposed to the
distant and foggy future. This is a prime example:
for a Mars mission, *everything* scales to the size of
the crew. If you scale it all the way down to one
person, especially a 30 kg person (like the spina
bifida victim I described earlier), then we currently
*have* the propulsion technology to get her to
Mars. Today, now! Three shuttle launches would
suffice, or perhaps 5 Titans.
And I will tell you Gina, I would bet on that young lady,
long before I would bet on the track star fighter jocks
we now have. I would bet on her to have the intestinal
fortitude to fight against long odds, to work steadily to set
up an environment for future generations in that
harsh space environment. Even if her farm capsule failed
and she faced death by starvation, I would bet on her
to continue to work to the end of her strength to build
infrastructure for those who would follow, inspired by her
courage. Her whole life has been spent meeting and overcoming
severe challenges. This indeed could be the mother
of the Martian race. spike
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