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I wonder why the space agencies chose only 2 males for the Year In Space ISS Mission?

I think it would have made more sense to have at least 1 male and 1 female astronaut, or more preferably 3 male and 3 female astronauts, for the following 2 reasons:

  1. Compare any effects between males and females in long duration space missions;

  2. To have a minimal statistical comparison between differences in physiologies, 3 would be a minimum sample to establish any hint of any trends.

I am aware of a previous related question One year Mission: Using data from Valeri Polyakov? but I believe this to be a different question.

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My Other Head
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    Sending fertile women into space is kind of cruel. – Deer Hunter Sep 15 '15 at 15:36
  • It's just PR anyway. The Russians did this a long time ago. – Organic Marble Sep 15 '15 at 15:46
  • @OrganicMarble Hey, not at all with the medical science available today. "Safety first" makes all astronauts and enthusiasts impatient. But maybe it isn't such a bad idea in the long run to start there. If the ten first astronauts launched all died, we might not have had a HSF program at all today. – LocalFluff Sep 15 '15 at 16:40
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    Does seem rather a strange choice. The top ten longest space-flights were all done by men, and a woman has never been up for longer than a year (current record for a woman is 199 days) so it seems that to the extent that more data is needed about the effects on humans of prolonged flights, more new ground would be covered by sending woman as opposed to men. – simplicio Sep 15 '15 at 16:50
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    @OrganicMarble the Russians did it; but they did a horrible job of medical data collection/storage. Getting access to the data on long term space habitation that Roscosmos should have inherited from the Soviet program was a major priority of NASA when pushing for expanded collaboration following the fall of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, when they finally did get a copy of the data, they discovered that it's quality was uselessly poor for what they wanted to do with it. – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight Sep 15 '15 at 18:37
  • @DeerHunter Preventing women from choosing to go to space just because they happen to be fertile is even more cruel. – corsiKa Sep 16 '15 at 00:52
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    @corsiKa - this is a medical research ethics and PR fallout question. Even if you find a willing female subject, how do you manage the bad repute you get after she a) becomes barren, b) gets cancer? There is Congress and their constituencies, after all, and you don't want any budget cuts. Please note that once you perfect rad protection from GCR/solar wind, you would want to send a woman aloft to demonstrate flight safety. – Deer Hunter Sep 16 '15 at 05:07
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    @DeerHunter: Why/what is cruel about that? don't get the ethics behind that statement. – Zaibis Sep 16 '15 at 07:31
  • @Zaibis - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plutonium_Files – Deer Hunter Sep 16 '15 at 08:30
  • @DeerHunter: are you kidding me? Or am I missunderstanding OP? OP is asking why not also sending women to ISS and you say that wold be cruel and argue with an wikipedia introduction of a book that handles injecting plutonium doses to mainly men. I don't see the point in how far that answers the question what would be cruel about also sending women to ISS... – Zaibis Sep 16 '15 at 09:01
  • @DeerHunter: Or am I not informed about puplic informations that the main expiriments on ISS are to test how people perform in space while having injected plutonium? In that case I would call it also cruel for men anyway.... – Zaibis Sep 16 '15 at 09:04
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    @Zaibis - we know that one gets significant radiation dose in LEO, especially on a long mission (with SPEs and whatnot). Long stay in space increases the risk of cancer and infertility for women. Would you do this deliberately, and for what practical purpose? Please read carefully the second bullet from PearsonArtPhoto's answer below. – Deer Hunter Sep 16 '15 at 09:05
  • @DeerHunter: Well If there were women doing this volunteer what would happen for sure, I still don't see why it is more cruel than women letting their self getting sterilized. But I have to say I didn't know that and the information would allready have been enough to at least understand your point. But in which way the book you linked would have been giving any claryfication is still a riddle to me. – Zaibis Sep 16 '15 at 10:20
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    @Zaibis - that was an example of atrociously unethical medical research. On par with Mengele, 731 and Nevada/Totsk nuclear battlefield exercises. – Deer Hunter Sep 16 '15 at 10:44

2 Answers2

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The test had to start somewhere. There are a number of reasons why they couldn't simply do a 6 person stay, that make it somewhat difficult at least. These include:

  • There is a natural cycle to bring down astronauts from the ISS, in that a Soyuz needs to be replaced every 6 months. While in theory a crew could bring a Soyuz, and bring the old one down, that hasn't been done in some time.
  • NASA is required to follow OSHA standards, although they have a partial exemption for one particular aspect, namely that of radiation. My answer to this question gives the requirements, which are different for men and women. Women are more sensitive to radiation, because breast cancer is a bigger risk in women, and all other cancers are roughly equivalent between the two sexes. This means that the ideal candidate from NASA for a long duration test is an older male (But not too old).
  • There are a lot of astronauts who want to go up to space, but very few who currently have that opportunity. Reducing the opportunity to get to space makes astronauts unhappy.
  • Certain experiments that are running on the ISS require special training. There are more than just a long duration space flight test required. Thus, a new flow of astronauts is required.
  • There is one NASA and one Russian doing this test. That seems required to balance the ISS workload.
  • NASA chose a person with an identical twin, to give more exact comparisons.
  • No doubt there will be extra tests done on the two astronauts, which would take away from required astronaut duties, if not handled in limited doses.

Bottom line, they could have done this as you proposed, but they want to start slowly. This will give them valuable data, without causing risks. I'm sure if they learn anything interesting from this, they will continue doing similar tests.

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They have several more years to do more of these experiments before they go to Mars.

Mark Adler
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