Survival and Sacrifice in Mars Exploration

Seedhouse envisions the hard choices of long distance space travel, which will require careful ethical and scientific guidelines to navigate. Imagine the scenario where a crewmember develops a life-threatening illness with two years left on a mission. Should this crewmember be allowed to continue, to risk or even sacrifice his or her life for the mission? What about a crew member who is disabled? A disabled astronaut removes two crew members from their normal duties: the disabled member and the crewmember caretaker. A mission may not be able to sacrifice the work of two of its members. And what if a crewmember does perish? Is the body to be stored two years for return to earth, or will there be a burial in space ? Questions like these, and hundreds of others, have been explored by science fiction, but scant attention has been paid by those designing missions. Fortunately, the experience gained in Antarctic exploration more than 100 years ago provides crews and mission planners with a framework to deal with contingencies, and provide a unique insight into the challenges of the Inspiration Mars, Mars One and Mars Direct missions. As much as space has been described as a New World and a New Frontier, Mars bears greater similarity to the Antarctic and arctic, not simply as an extreme environment but also as a place with the potential to create all sorts of problems for those tasked with its exploration.