What to do if someone dies in space

Beijing time on April 8, according to foreign media reports, commercial aerospace companies such as Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are now offering space travel opportunities to celebrities and civilians. Previously, astronauts had to undergo strict physical fitness before entering space. Training and medical screening, the risk of natural death in space is considered extremely low, but for the current new era of space travel, space travelers do not seem to need medical screening, and they can enter space with only a small amount of pre-flight training.

At present, this phenomenon has gradually exposed some problems. As people of different social classes enter space and the prospect of human beings establishing human bases on the moon and more distant planets in the next few years, some scientists have raised an “inevitable” question – Someone dies in space, what should be done?

According to the current international space law jointly formulated by many parties, all countries have the responsibility to approve and supervise all national space activities, whether government or private commercial activities. In the United States, commercial tourism space activities require a launch license issued by the Federal Aviation Administration.

If someone dies during commercial space travel, the specific cause of death needs to be determined, and if the death of a space travel participant is due to a mechanical failure of the spacecraft, further commercial launches will be suspended for further investigation. If it is not a mechanical failure of the spacecraft, consider the commercial space travel provider’s overall responsibility for care of all passengers and assess whether the provider is doing all the protective measures to prevent fatalities.

The ‘inevitable’ death in space

Currently, space travelers may spend anywhere from a few minutes to a few days in the space environment, and while their time in space is limited, the potential risk of natural death is low, but not impossible.

What if someone dies in space? This question will become more important – and more complex, in the future humans may perform longer missions in space and even permanently settle in outer space environments.

Fundamentally, we need to establish some kind of investigative process to determine the cause of human death in outer space, and there have been similar investigative mechanisms before, such as the crash of the US space shuttle Columbia in 2004, when the space shuttle was in It disintegrated when returning to Earth, killing all seven crew members.

But these are expert investigations of well-known events, and they only involve spaceflight. With the increasing opportunities for space travel, human death in space or on other planets is inevitable, whether by accident, disease, or age. of.

It is very necessary to carry out formal death investigation procedures for long-term space missions and alien bases, so that clear information on the number of deaths and causes of death can be established, lessons can be learned, and a working mechanism can be established to identify the cause.

Many procedures related to autopsies and investigations can be carried out from Earth, and currently international space law tacitly approves the State that has registered the spacecraft to have jurisdiction over the space object and any person, but the State with such jurisdiction is likely to conduct investigations and Identify the authoritative party that handles the death in space procedure.

While this is a good start, it is necessary to have an agreement that fits a specific solution or mission. Planned space missions include: building a human Process mechanisms for what to do after death and integrating these processes into all space programs can effectively reduce the occurrence of traumatic events in space. If some countries are involved, it is even more important to reach relevant agreements at the beginning of the space mission.

The actual situation will be very tricky

In the process of dealing with corpses in space, in addition to legal factors, the task of sending human remains into the solar system also needs to consider the physical treatment of human remains. There is a very important link here, and that is how different cultural ideologies treat the dead. is different. On short-term space missions, human remains may be brought back to Earth, requiring specific conditions for preservation and storage to avoid contaminating surviving crew members.

On a journey to and from Mars, which could take years and a few decades to come, human remains could freeze in the frigid space environment to lighten the weight of the spacecraft and allow it to Easier to store and transport to the ground. But if we establish human bases on alien planets, human corpses may need to be disposed of, not stored.

Although fans of the sci-fi drama “Star Trek” still remember the way Spock’s body was dumped in space, it is not realistic in reality, and countries may object to floating human remains in space, and the remains will become space debris, which is very important to the near-Earth. Orbits pose a growing hazard, and at the same time, the families of the deceased may want the remains to be returned to them.

The handling of human remains at an alien human base is equally worrisome, as burying human remains on another planet could lead to biological contamination of that planet, as could cremation, and it could take up a lot of natural resources.

There is no doubt that sooner or later we will face the problem of storing and disposing of human remains in space, but the ethical issues surrounding death in space cross anthropological, legal and cultural lines, an issue that may make people uncomfortable, but as humans Becoming a space species is one of the problems we inevitably need to address.