Human spaceflight’s new era is fraught with medical and ethical questions

From the article

>Many other molecular changes followed similar patterns as the Twin Study, shifting during spaceflight for both short- and long-term flights and then largely returning to baseline once back on Earth, the SOMA data suggest.

>What this means for astronaut health isn’t yet entirely clear, especially when projecting to the much longer timescales that a Mars mission or stays at a moon base might involve. Despite an increase in the number of people going to space, the sample sizes remain small, given that each of the new private missions has carried a crew of four. Even still, Overbey and her colleagues intend SOMA to become a hub for data on commercial and government crewed missions that can help answer pressing health questions.

Also from the article

>The FAA suggests that private astronauts consult with a physician, who they recommend be trained in spaceflight issues, prior to flying. But there’s nobody checking to make sure that happens. And even if a doctor nixed a person from signing up for a commercial flight, [what’s to stop that person](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-44357-x) from simply finding another doctor to okay them?

>“These are obviously really complicated issues,” Tulodziecki says, noting that lawmakers should start figuring out what they need to consider about who should be allowed to fly on private missions long before the moratorium on regulations expires.

>“There are lots of space ethics efforts that think about really large issues; political systems on other planets and whatnot,” she says. “But that’s really far in the future, right? This one is already here, it’s already happening. So, it’s really something urgent.”