From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Tue Mar 30 1999 - 21:33:25 MST
> 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...
NASA must change. I suspect we will hafta go around NASA to get
anything really creative done. They *must* be conservative because
they are NASA and they hafta deal with public relations. A Mars
colony requires thinking outside the box. And, let us not sell NASA
too short: some wacky ideas may start to grow on them.
> 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
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