The ethics of dealing with astronauts’ bodies.
That’s not an issue I address in the book. Maybe I should.
8 thoughts on “Death In Space”
Comments are closed.
The ethics of dealing with astronauts’ bodies.
That’s not an issue I address in the book. Maybe I should.
Comments are closed.
I’d hope the option of “burial in space” would exist. Give the body the proper vector and it would burn up in the atmosphere.
I doubt the average orbital mission would have the means to put the corpse on an intercept course with the Sun though:-(.
That only works in LEO.
Yeah, I should’ve read the article first:-P.
Better get that photon torpedo tube designed.
What would the Fremen do?
Dehydrate the body to capture the water, of course. Makes sense.
I always figured they’d lash the body to a small boom or antenna outside the ship and hang a sign on it saying “Death to Space Pirates!”
I like what happened in “3001,” where Poole’s freeze-dried body is found and brought back to life. I think that would be the ideal way to be go in space. One that had a fleeting ghost of a chance of being reversed by an advanced civilization.
As for the rest of it, people in the era of exploration didn’t get quite as hung up on death as NASA does. Magellan, who is credited with circumnavigating the globe, never actually did that. He was killed in the Philippines by a guy named Lapu-Lapu. So were a lot of his crew. But the only death anyone remembers or laments was Magellan’s, and even that isn’t really lamented that much. One member of his crew did make it all the way around (Juan Sebastian Elcano), and that’s something.
I know death is traumatic, but it is also the fate of every single human being that has ever lived or ever will live, including me and my children. Get over it. And after you’ve done that, go out and explore your ass off!