WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR BODY WHEN YOU DIE IN SPACE?AND SHOULD COLONISTS ON MARS BE ALLOWED TO EAT EACH OTHER? 
NASA ON JULY 21, 1969, when the Apollo 11 crew was due to depart the lunar surface after a 22-hour visit, two speeches were placed on President Richard Nixon’s desk. “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace,” read the contingency speech. Would Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong live out the rest of their days staring at the blue glow of Earth from 250,000 miles away? We’ve lost only 18 people in space—including 14 NASA astronauts—since humankind first took to strapping ourselves to rockets. That’s relatively low, considering our history of blasting folks into space without quite knowing what would happen. When there have been fatalities, the entire crew has died, leaving no one left to rescue. But as we move closer to a human mission to Mars, there’s a higher likelihood that individuals will die—whether that’s on the way, while living in harsh environments, or some other reason. And any problems that arise on Mars—technical issues or lack of food, for example—could leave an entire crew or colony stranded and fending for themselves. No settlement plans are being discussed at NASA (leave those to pie-in-the-sky private groups like Mars One for now), but a crewed mission has been on the docket for some time, and could touch down as early as the 2040s. NASA’s “Journey to Mars” quotes an estimated three-year round-trip, leaving plenty of time for any number of things to go wrong. “The real interesting question is, what happens on a mission to Mars or on the lunar space station if there were [a death],” says Emory University bioethicist Paul Wolpe. “What happens when it may be months or years before a body can get back to Earth—or where it’s impractical to bring the body back at all?” 
Paramount Studios/Movie Clips via YouTube Today’s astronauts travel to space by way of the Russian Soyuz, then spend a few months on the International Space Station. Because astronauts are in impeccable health at the time of launch, a death in the ISS crew would likely result from an accident during a spacewalk. “In the worst case scenario, something happens during a spacewalk,” says Chris Hadfield, Canadian astronaut and former commander of the ISS. “You could suddenly be struck by a micro-meteorite, and there’s nothing you can do about that. It could puncture a hole in your suit, and within a few seconds you’re incapacitated.” This hypothetical astronaut would only have about 15 seconds before they lost consciousness. Before they froze, they would most likely die from asphyxiation or decompression. 10 seconds of exposure to the vacuum of space would force the water in their skin and blood to vaporize, while their body expanded outward like a balloon being filled with air. Their lungs would collapse, and after 30 seconds they would be paralyzed—if they weren’t already dead by this point. The likelihood of death on the ISS is low, and it’s never happened before. But what would surviving astronauts do if it did? PREPARE FOR THE WORSTISS and shuttle astronaut Terry Virts served two expeditions on the space station and one mission on the space shuttle. In total he’s clocked 213 days in space. But the astronaut says he’s never been trained to handle a dead body in space. “I did quite a bit of medical training to save people, but not for this.” NASA’s official statement to Popular Science on the subject left a lot to be desired: “NASA does not prepare contingency plans for all remote risks. NASA’s response to any unplanned on-orbit situation will be determined in a real time collaborative process between the Flight Operations Directorate, Human Health and Performance Directorate, NASA leadership, and our International Partners.” “In my 16 years as an astronaut I don’t remember talking with another astronaut about the possibility of dying,” Virts says. “We all understand it’s a possibility, but the elephant in the room was just not discussed.” 
NASA Though they don’t like talking about it, NASA astronauts do prepare for death of a crewmate. But NASA’s out-of-sight-out-of-mind policy on death may not be the norm. Commander Hadfield tells Popular Science that all international partners who train for missions to the ISS (including JAXA and ESA) do in fact prepare for the death of a crewmember. “We have these things called ‘contingency simulations’ where we discuss what to do with the body,” he says. Hadfield discusses these ‘death simulations’ in his book An Astronauts Guide to Life. He sets the scene—“Mission control: ‘we’ve just received word from the Station: Chris is dead.’ Immediately, people start working the problem. Okay, what are we going to do with his corpse? There are no body bags on Station, so should we shove it in a spacesuit and stick it in a locker? But what about the smell? Should we send it back to Earth on a resupply ship and let it burn up with the rest of the garbage on re-entry? Jettison it during a spacewalk and let it float away into space?” As Hadfield points out, a corpse in space presents some major logistical problems. The fact that a dead body is a biohazard is definitely the biggest concern, and finding the space to store it in is a close second. Since NASA lacks a protocol for sudden death on the ISS, the station’s commander would probably decide on how to handle the body. “If someone died while on an EVA I would bring them inside the airlock first,” Hadfield says. “I would probably keep them inside their pressurized suit; bodies actually decompose faster in a spacesuit, and we don’t want the smell of rotting meat or off gassing, it’s not sanitary. So we would keep them in their suit and store it somewhere cold on the station.” If submarines lose a crew member and can’t make it to land right away, they store bodies near the torpedoes—where it’s cold, and separate from the living quarters. The crew of the ISS already stores trash in the coldest spot on the station; it keeps the bacteria away from them and makes smell less of an issue. “I would probably store them in there until a ship was going home, where they would take the third seat on the Soyuz,” Hadfield says. They could also store a body in one of the airlocks. FREEZE-DRIED FUNERALSNASA may not have specific contingency plans for a sudden death, but the agency is working on it; in 2005 they commissioned a study from Swedish eco-burial company Promessa. The study resulted in a yet-to-be-tested design called “The Body Back.” The creepy-sounding system uses a technique called promession, which essentially freeze-dries a body. Instead of producing the ash of a traditional cremation, it would turn a frozen corpse into a million little pieces of icy flesh. During the study, Promessa creators Susanne Wiigh-Masak and Peter Masak collaborated with design students to think about what this process might look like while en route to Mars. On Earth, the promession process would use liquid nitrogen to freeze the body, but in space a robotic arm would suspend the body outside of the spaceship enclosed in a bag. The body would stay outside in the freezing void for an hour until it became brittle, then the arm would vibrate, fracturing the body into ash-like remains. This process could theoretically turn a 200-pound astronaut into a suitcase-sized 50-pound lump, which you could store on a spacecraft for years. 
Promessa The “Body Back” could provide astronauts frosty funerals. If freeze-dried cremation isn’t an option, you can always “jettison” the body out on a forever path into the void. While the UN has regulations about littering in space, the rules may not apply to human corpses. “Currently, there are no specific guidelines in planetary protection policy, at either NASA or the international level, that would address ‘burial’ of a deceased astronaut by release into space,” says Catherine Conley at NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection. But the laws of physics might trump the laws of humankind on this one. Unless we strapped a mini rocket to the deceased, they would end up following the trajectory of the spacecraft from which they were ejected. As the years went on and the bodies accumulated, that would make for a morbid trip to and from Mars. MARTIAN BURIAL RITUALSBut the risks of dying along the way are nothing compared to the inevitability of dying once you get there. In promoting his own future space settlement plans, SpaceX’s Elon Musk has openly cautioned that, “If you want to go to Mars, prepare to die.” Which begs the question: if someone dies on the Red Planet, where do you put them? If someone were to perish on the spaceship en route to Mars (or beyond), cold storage or a round of promession could be a fine solution. But there isn’t a morgue on the surface of Mars, and spaceships are usually low on extra space. So what would Martian explorers do with a body? “I would expect that if a crew member died while on Mars, we would bury them there rather than bring the body all the way home,” Hadfield says. That makes sense because of the long journey back, but it poses some potential contamination problems. Even the rovers exploring Mars are required by law not to bring Earth microbes to their dusty new planet. Spacecraft are repeatedly cleaned and sanitized before launch to help protect potentially habitable locales from being overtaken by intrepid Earthly microbes. But the bugs on a rover are nothing compared to the bacteria that would hitch a ride on a dead body. This makes the issue of planetary protection even more nuanced, but a Martian graveyard might not be so far-fetched. “Regarding the disposal of organic material (including bodies) on Mars,” NASA’s Conley says, “we impose no restrictions so long as all Earth microbes have been killed—so cremation would be necessary. Though planetary protection does require documentation of disposal, to ensure that future missions are not surprised.” But not everyone who dies in space will be treated like inconvenient cargo. Some of those corpses will actually save lives. WORST CASE SCENARIOSpace may be the final frontier, but it wasn’t always that way. Humans have spent millennia traversing difficult landscapes and putting themselves in bizarre and dangerous situations in the name of discovery. Thousands of lives have been lost in this pursuit, and on occasion the deceased have actually saved the lives of their comrades. Not through acts of deadly heroism, mind you, but through acts of cannibalism. 
20th Century Fox If you were stuck on Mars, your fallen comrades might start to look pretty appetizing Don’t think for a second that this couldn’t happen in space. In the book The Martian, author Andy Weir wrote in a scene (spoiler) in which the Ares crew decides to go back to Mars to save a stranded Mark Watney. Johansen, the Ares systems operator and smallest crew-member (requiring the least amount of calories) on the mission tells her father that the crew has a last-ditch plan to make it to Mars if NASA won’t send them supplies for the trip. “Everyone would die but me, they would all take pills and die. They’ll do it right away so they don’t have to use up any food,” she explains. “So how would you survive?” her father asks. “The supplies wouldn’t be the only source of food,” she says. While extreme, the crew’s plan to commit suicide so one member could save Watney is not totally unheard of. “That’s a time-honored tradition,” says bioethicist Paul Wolpe. “People have committed suicide to save others, and in fact religiously that’s totally acceptable. We can’t draw straws to see who we’re going to kill to eat, but there are many times when we’ve considered people heroes who jump on the grenade to save their buddies.” Wolpe says the school of thought on cannibalism for survival is split. “There are two kinds of approaches to it. One says even though we owe the body an enormous amount of respect, life is primary, and if the only way one could possibly survive would be to eat a body, it’s acceptable but not desirable.” Mars boasts a landscape so barren and dead, it would put the frozen mountains that drove the famous Donner party to cannibalism to shame. If anything interrupted the mission’s food supply, they’d quickly run out of alternatives. But no space agency has an official policy on Martian cannibalism—yet. A JOURNEY INTO THE VOIDHumans have only been traveling to space for a short time relative to our existence, but we’ve been pushing the boundaries of exploration for thousands of years—and we will no doubt continue to do so despite the risks. Every astronaut or space tourist wishing to embark on a journey to Mars will ultimately be forced to grapple with the reality of deaths both sudden and slow. NASA may never have officially published a contingency plan for the Apollo moonwalkers, but they were prepared to lose the crew. In his biography, Nixon speechwriter William Safire recalled the tenuous Apollo 11 liftoff. “We knew disaster would not come in the form of a sudden explosion,” he wrote. “It would mean the men would be stranded on the moon in communication with Mission Control as they slowly starved to death, or deliberately ‘closed down communication,’—the euphemism for suicide.” In fact, NASA had planned to shut down communication with the stranded astronauts and issue them a formal “burial at sea.” But even given that morbid hypothetical turn of events, everyone knew they would keep going to the moon. “Others will follow, and surely find their way home,” Nixon’s back-up speech read. “Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.” 
NASA As we enter an age of space exploration sure to be filled with rocket launches and crewed missions, the thought of death looms over every crew-member and decision maker. Astronaut Terry Virts may never have casually chatted about dying over coffee with his friends, but he knew what was at stake when he launched into space. “I believe that it is worth it, and that any great endeavor will involve risk,” he says. “We consciously accept the unavoidable hazards that we face.” Like most explorers, shuttle astronaut Mike Massimino is quick to say that the risk is worthwhile. “It’s about increasing our understanding,” he tells PopSci. “I think it’s worth the risk we take. Exploration has always taken lives and I’m sure it always will.” The realistic options for a deceased crewmember—cannibalism, cold storage in the trash room, being freeze-dried and shaken into a million frozen flakes—lack the dignity we associate with the majestic endeavor of spaceflight. But Wolpe doesn’t think humankind will have a hard time adjusting to the harsh realities of posthumous treatment in space. We already accept that Earthbound explorers may suffer indignities if they die in the field. Wolpe sees Mount Everest as a perfect Earthly analogue for the future Mars missions: when people die, their bodies just stay there. Forever. 
NASA We’re forever chasing that next giant leap Every year around 800 people attempt to reach the summit of the mountain. Every year, some of those people die. And then another 800 people try the next year. These people want to be first, to be the best, to explore something marvelous and rare. And with this determination comes the risk of paying the ultimate price. “If you climb Everest, you know that if you die you’re being left there,” says Wolpe. There’s no fancy method of cremation on Everest, no respectfully somber place to stow a body, no way to reasonably pick up a corpse for burial back home. Over 200 bodies lay across the mountain, some of them still visible on days when snow cover is light. Everyone who climbs past them is reminded that they’re risking their lives—and their chance at a proper burial—for a chance at reaching the summit. “You just accept that,” Wolpe says. “That’s part of climbing Everest.”
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Month: January 2017
Shinola: An American Success Story Against All Odds!!!
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The Very Sick Patients-Some Further Perspectives
The Very Sick Patients-Some Further Perspectives
I got some interest in my article about Trumpcare. I want to clarify more about the very sick patients.
About one year ago, I was watching television in my study. Quite by accident I stumbled upon a great documentary shot in rural Virginia. It was an area inhabited by what I would call “poor white people.” They had very low educations and very low job achievements in life. (Please my father’s family came from those same Appalachian roots. I’m not “looking down my nose at these people.”)
For decades these people had no healthcare in the area where they lived. Then a non-profit organization purchased a used recreational vehicle and equipped it as a clinic on wheels. The vehicle was staffed by nurse practitioners, but no doctors. The interaction of the new patients with their health care providers was shown. Some people in that area were helped by the new health care services. Some people had chronic illnesses and died. No one was sad or indignant when one of these very sick people died. There were no protestors going to Richmond. There were no indignant posts on social media. These humble and very sick people died with little or no notice. (Everyone the documentary was shot during Obama’s presidency. I’m not criticizing Bush II or Trump!)
Let us step back for a moment and look at this very sick population. Let us go back to Alaska. As of 2014 their population was 736,732. When the state legislature and the governor did their study of the health care system they found 500 very ill patients. 500 in a population of 736,732 is a tiny minority of .0006786728% of the population. This tiny minority generated healthcare costs of $55,000,000 per year or an average of $110,000 per patient.
I honestly believe that we will see Trumpcare charge this tiny and expensive minority very high insurance premiums that they can’t pay or push them back onto the states. When this is done, it might not even be necessary to force all the young people to sign up for health care coverage as Obamacare does. As is the case with Alaska, premiums will drop and deductibles might drop also. The great majority of the population will be satisfied with their new health coverage. The health insurance companies will be happy too because they will be rid of their most expensive clients.
What happens to this tiny, suffering and very expensive group of very sick people? If they are lucky enough to live in affluent states like Alaska, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, New York, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, Mass., Conn., etc. these states will somehow find the money to care for these people. If these sick people live in many other states, they are going to have a problem. These states will not have the money to care for these people. The Republicans will offer block grants to these poor states to help with these healthcare cost. I doubt that they will cover even a small fraction of the actual costs.
Elena gets indignant about this situation. She points out that, by law, care must be given to any sick person. She is correct. In some states these sick and unfunded patients will overwhelm the local healthcare systems. Hospitals and clinics will go bankrupt and close. These sick people will be left with no healthcare at all. Like the sad people in Virginia in the documentary, they will die quietly with little or no notice.
Here Comes Trumpcare!
Being the husband of a doctor I am watching closely the repeal of Obamacare and the replacement with Trumpcare. Unfortunately health care is very expensive in this country. You can cut the costs somewhat by reigning in the outrageous prices that pharmaceutical companies charge for drugs. You can also start a competitive bidding procedure where patients can shop around for the cheapest costs of their treatments.(i.e. a hip replacement can have several different prices in a given city and great price differences for different states.) You can also set up a system where health insurance companies sell nationwide and compete with each other. (Look at what happens when you’re looking for other kinds of insurance and go to a website like esurance or others that give you bids of term insurance policies.) In the rush to replace Obamacare there will not be the time right now to do this.
People buying health insurance are enraged over high premiums and high deductibles. Trumpcare will move to address this. I have been telling everyone that the end product voted on by congress and signed off on by Donald Trump will have elements like what was done in Alaska. The 500 sickest and most expensive patients were taken out of the insurance pool. These patients cost insurance companies and the state of Alaska over $55,000,000 per year. When this happened premium increases dropped to 7% per year and deductibles dropped. In the case of Alaska it is a very rich state due to oil and gas revenues. The state appropriated another $55,000,000 to pay for these very sick patients.
The rest of the US is not wealthy in the sense that Alaska is. There will not be the money to pay for these very sick patients. This will be a challenge for the states,etc.
Here Comes Trumpcare
Being the husband of a doctor I am watching closely the repeal of Obamacare and the replacement with Trumpcare. Unfortunately health care is very expensive in this country. You can cut the costs somewhat by reigning in the outrageous prices that pharmaceutical companies charge for drugs. You can also start a competitive bidding procedure where patients can shop around for the cheapest costs of their treatments.(i.e. a hip replacement can have several different prices in a given city and great price differences for different states.) You can also set up a system where health insurance companies sell nationwide and compete with each other. (Look at what happens when you’re looking for other kinds of insurance and go to a website like esurance or others that give you bids of term insurance policies.) In the rush to replace Obamacare there will not be the time right now to do this.
People buying health insurance are enraged over high premiums and high deductibles. Trumpcare will move to address this. I have been telling everyone that the end product voted on by congress and signed off on by Donald Trump will have elements like what was done in Alaska. The 500 sickest and most expensive patients were taken out of the insurance pool. These patients cost insurance companies and the state of Alaska over $5,000,000 per year. When this happened premium increases dropped to 7% per year and deductibles dropped. In the case of Alaska it is a very rich state due to oil and gas revenues. The state appropriated another $5,000,000 to pay for these very sick patients.
The rest of the US is not wealthy in the sense that Alaska is. There will not be the money to pay for these very sick patients. This will be a challenge for the states,etc.
North Korea The Aftermath Of A Sophisticated Conventional Or Nuclear Attack To Eliminate Their Nuclear Weapons
North Korea: The Aftermath of A Sophisticated Conventional Or Nuclear Attack To Eliminate Their Nuclear Weapons
Stratfor offered no estimate on the number of casualties (people killed and wounded) in their hypothetical conventional attack to eliminate the North Korean nuclear capability. One could look back to attacks against Iraq, etc. over the years for some guidance. In a precision nuclear attack using low-yield weapons, one might be able to get a computer simulation. No one has experience with such an attack. No discussion was put forth as to the number of possible casualties in South Korea as North Korea fires artillery and launches air strikes in response to the attack.
I do not have the capability to give good estimates but I would guess that 100,000 is a good estimate of the casualties in this phase of the battle.
What comes after is where it gets really ugly. Under the best of circumstances, North Korea is a fragile country living right on the edge of disaster. Any serious conventional or nuclear attack will disrupt this fragile infrastructure. People will start to die due to the cold, lack of medicine, and lack of food.
Aid from other countries will be delayed for a long time. We will have what is called “A Mexican standoff.” China and South Korea will hold long and careful negotiations before sending any troops to help with humanitarian efforts. There will be a large fear of troops of the People’s Liberation Army meeting South Korean troops with firefights starting due to mistakes and miscalculations. Another saying comes into play here as follows:
“Nero fiddled while Rome burned.”
If we have a nuclear attack, even with very low-yield weapons, there will be the added problem of radioactivity left on the ground and in the air.
In this phase of the war you could literally have hundreds of thousands of casualties due to freezing to death, starvation, and death from diseases that simple medications can stop.
Nuclear Weapons Use In North Korea-An Update
Nuclear Weapons Use In North Korea: An Update
David Whitten is a great lawyer who represented me in a tough case 15 years ago. He pulled off a miracle in negotiations. I didn’t have the cash to make the miracle happen. On a personal level, I tell David that he should get the Academy Award for being the world’s best dad. He and his dear wife raised their own kids and have adopted many more children, including those with special needs. I can’t say enough nice things about David.
David took strong exception to my prediction that Donald Trump would use nuclear weapons in North Korea. He claims that the Chinese would retaliate and it would cause World War III. I have evidence that refutes this.
A few days ago, I talked about North Korea. I raised a simple common sense question that no one has stepped up to answer yet. The question is as follows:
“Iran has tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues. Yet they have not been able to build a nuclear warhead. North Korea is dead broke and cannot even feed their population. Yet they have been able to develop multiple nuclear warheads, Some pretty-advanced delivery systems, etc. Who is putting up the money to make this happen?”
When it comes to providing the financing, four suspects come to light as follows:
China: Elena suspects them. I do not. Whether you like Henry Kissinger or not, he is truly the one Western man who understands China. He wrote a book about China that is long and involved. Please find the time to read it. After reading this book I think that the Chinese would be much too cautious and responsible ever to do such a thing.
Pakistan: One hears all sorts of stories about radical Muslims and the fear or Pakistani nuclear technology and weapons being sold to terrorists. I have personal experience dealing with very legitimate large private companies in Pakistan. They are true professionals. They run excellent companies that are 100% honest. Prudent and careful investments there will yield to god returns. I have seen interviews with senior officials at the US Embassy to Pakistan. They uniformly praise the Pakistan military and the security that it maintains over nuclear weapons. I reject them as a suspect.
Iranian Hard Liners: The Revolutionary Guards similar groups might be financing North Korean nuclear weapons programs. Of course, the questions comes to mind: “If they have put up the money why haven’t they received a nuclear war head?”
Wealthy Jihadist financing ISIS and other terrorist groups. These are my prime suspects. What do they want for the big investment? The answer is straight forward. They want to create a department store (ie: Macy’s Dillard’s, etc) for nuclear warheads. North Korea will be the “go to” place for terrorists to purchase nuclear warheads and radiological materials for “dirty bombs.”
The military and intelligence authorities in several countries know about this danger. Stratfor is the best civilian intelligence agency on planet earth. They already have published a creditable war plan using very-advanced conventional weapons to destroy North Korea’s nuclear capability:
https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/what-us-would-use-strike-north-korea
Stratfor has also looked at how the North Koreans would retaliate and the consequences of such a military strike:
https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/how-north-korea-would-retaliate
https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/cost-intervention
Nowhere in this analysis do the Stratfor people see any probability of a Chinese military response to such an attack.
Now we add Donald Trump into the equation. During his campaign for president he repeated presented the question: “Why can’t I use nuclear weapons?” All other US president in recent history consider a nuclear first-strike of any kind taboo. Richard M. Nixon was the one exception. He wanted to employ nuclear weapons against North Vietnam and North Korea. Henry Kissinger blocked all these attempts to use nuclear weapons. Donald Trump has a national security advisor, General Flynn, just like him-short tempered and vindictive.
Kim Jun Un is going to underestimate Trump. He will challenge Trump and provoke him to action. Trump will have a look at the war plan in place to destroy North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. Trump will quickly come to the conclusion that such an attack would leave Kim Jun Un in place with many military capabilities. Trump and General Flynn will choose tactical nuclear weapons to destroy North Korea’s military and affect a regime change there. A surprise nuclear attack will follow.
Will China retaliate with nuclear weapons? I think not. China has strict rules of engagement for the use of nuclear weapons. To make a long story short, China will only use nuclear weapons if a nuclear weapon is detonated above or on Chinese territory. China does not consider North Korea Chinese territory.
What are the consequences of such a nuclear strike? Financial markets will tumble and investors will suffer short-term losses. You will have a huge refugee problem like we have in Syria now. China and South Korea will be “stuck with the bill for this mess.” Trump will pay nothing. South Korea will suffer serious damage as the remnants of the North Korean military machine attack Seoul. Again, Donald Trump will pay nothing to repair these damages.
There will be huge and violent protests worldwide. Trump will be compared to Adolf Hitler. A precedent will also be set where any country with nuclear weapons can make a first strike if tensions arise.
jacksmars 